/"- 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


LIFE   OF 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


BY 


E.     E.     BROWN 

Author  of  "  LIFE  OF  GARFIELD,"  "  LIFE  OF  WASHINGTON," 
"  FROM  NIGHT  TO  LIGHT,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


BOSTON 

D    LOTHROP    COMPANY 

WASHINGTON    STREET   OPPOSITE    BROMFIELD 


COPYRIGHT,  1884, 

BY 
D.  LOTHROP  AND  COMPANY. 


PS 

R9I 

BSl 


CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE. 

I.    ANCESTRY 9 

II.  BOYHOOD       ....                .20 

III.  EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS         .        .        .30 

IV.  OTHER   REMINISCENCES        ...       40 

V.  ABROAD 49 

VI.  CHANGE  IN  THE  HOME         ...       60 

VII.     THE  PROFESSOR 67 

VIII.     THE  LECTURER 74 

IX.  NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE       .        .      83 

X.       ELSIE_V_ENJiER 92 

XI.  FURTHER  ACQUAINTANCE      .        .        .107 

XII.  FAVORITES  OF  SONG      .        .        .        ,114 

XIII.  THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.        .        .        .     136 

XIV.  THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST     .        .        .152 
XV.  ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS  .        .        .        .171 

XVI.  THE  HOME  CIRCLE      .        .        .        .208 

XVII.     LOVE  OF  NATURE 227 

XVIII.  THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL         .     240 

XIX.  TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM      ....    284 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ANCESTRY. 


IN  a  quaint  old  gambrel-roofed  house  still 
standing  on  Cambridge  Common,  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  —  poet,  professor,  "  beloved 
physician/' — was  born,  on  the  twenty-ninth  of 
August,  1809.  His  father,  the  Rev.  Abiel 
Holmes,  was  the  pastor  of  the  "  First  Church  " 

in     famKn'Hcrp  — 


in   Cambridge  — 


That  ancient  church  whose  lofty  tower, 

Beneath  the   loftier  spire, 
Is  shadowed  when  the   sunset   hour 

Clothes  the  tall  shaft  in   fire. 

Here,  in  Revolutionary  times,  General  Wash 
ington  frequently  worshipped,  and  the  old  home 
stead  itself  was  the^  headquarters  of  the  Ameri 
can  army  during  the  siege  of  Boston. 

9 


10  OLIVER  W-ENDELL  HOLMES. 

"It  was^jL^great^happiness,''  writes  the  Poet 
at  the  Breakfast-Table,  "to  have  been  born  in 
an  old  house  haunted  by  such  recollections, 
with  harmless  ghosts  walking  its  corridors,  with 
fields  of  waving  grass  and  trees  and  singing 
birds,  and  that  vast  territory  of  four  or  five 
acres  around  it,  to  give  a  child  the  sense  that 
he  was  born  to  a  noble  principality.  .  .  . 

"The  gambrel-roofed  house  was  not  one  of 
those  old  Tory,  Episcopal  church-goer's  strong 
holds.  One  of  its  doors  opens  directly  upon 
the  Green,  always  called  the  Common ;  the 
other  faces  the  south,  a  few  steps  from  it, 
over  a  paved  foot-walk  on  the  other  side  of 
which  is  the  miniature  front  yard,  bordered 
with  lilacs  and  syringas. 

"The  honest  mansion  makes  no  pretensions. 
Accessible,  companionable,  holding  its  hand  out 
to  all  —  comfortable,  respectable,  and  even  in  its 
way  dignified,  but  not  imposing ;  not  a  house 
for  his  Majesty's  Counsellor,  or  the  Right  Rev 
erend  successor  of  Him  who  had  not  where 
to  lay  his  head,  for  something  like  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  it  has  stood  in  its  lot,  and 
seen  the  generations  of  men  come  and  go  like 
the  leaves  of  the  forest." 


ANCESTRY.  11 

The  house  was  not  originally  built  for  a  par 
sonage.  It  vws  first  the  residence  of  a  well- 
to-do  tailor,  who  sold  it  to  Jonathan  Hastings, 
a  prosperous  farmer  whom  the  college  students 
used  to  call  "  Yankee  Jont,"  and  whose  son 
was  the  college  steward  in  1775.  It  was  long 
known  in  Cambridge  as  the  "  Hastings  House," 
but  about  the  year  1792  it  was  sold  to  Elipha- 
let  Pearson,  the  Hebrew1  Professor  at  Harvard, 
and  in  1807  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
Rev.  Abiel  Holmes. 

For  forty  years  the  father  of  Oliver  Wen 
dell  Holmes  ministered  to  his  Cambridge  par 
ish,  revered  and  loved  by  all  who  knew  him. 
He  was  a  man  of  marked  literary  ability,  as  his 
Annals  of  America  shows  —  "full  of  learning," 
as  some  one  has  said,  "  but  never  distressing 
others  by  showing  how  learned  he  was." 

Said  T.  W.  Higginson,  at  the  Holmes  Break 
fast: 

"  I  should  like  to  speak  of  that  most  delightful 
of  sunny  old  men,  the  father  of  Doctor  Holmes, 
whom  I  knew  and  loved  when  I  was  a  child. 

.  .  I  was  brought  up  in  Cambridge,  my 
father's  house  being  next  door  to  that  of  Doctor 
Holmes'  gambrel- roofed  house,  and  the  library 


12  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

I  most  enjoyed  tumbling  about  in  was  the 
same  in  which  his  infant  gambols  had  first 
disturbed  the  repose  of  the  books.  I  shall 
always  remember  a  certain  winter  evening,  when 
we  boys  were  playing  before  the  fire,  how  the 
old  man  —  gray,  and  gentle,  and  kindly  as  any 
old  German  professor,  and  never  complaining 
of  our  loudest  gambols  —  going  to  the  frost- 
covered  window,  sketched  with  his  pen-knife 
what  seemed  a  cluster  of  brambles  and  a 
galaxy  of  glittering  stars,  and  above  that  he 
wrote,  Per  aspera  ad  astra :  'Through  difficul 
ties  to  the  stars.'  He  explained  to  us  what  it 
meant,  and  I  have  never  forgotten  that  quiet  win- 
ter  evening, and  the  sweet  talk  of  that  old  man." 
The  good  pastor  was  a  graduate  of  Yale 
College,  and  before  coming  to  Cambridge  had 
taught  at  his  Alma  Mater,  and  preached  in 
Georgia.  He  was  the  son  of  Doctor  David 
Holmes,  a  physician  of  Woodstock,  Ct,  who 
had  served  as  captain  in  the  French  and  Indian 
wars,  and  afterward  as  surgeon  in  the  Revo 
lutionary  army.  The  grandfather  of  Doctor 
.  David  Holmes  was  one  of  the  original  settlers 
of  Woodstock.  * 

*From   notes  furnished   the   writer  by   Dr.    Holmes. 


ANCESTRY.  13 

The  genealogy  of  the  Holmes  family  of  Wood 
stock  dates  from  Thomas  Holmes,  a  lawyer  of 
Gray's  Inn,  London.  In  1686,  John  Holmes, 
one  of  his  descendants,  joined  a  colony  from 
Roxbury,  Mass.,  and  settled  in  Woodstock,  Conn. 
His  son  David  married  a  certain  "  Bathsheba," 
who  had  a  remarkable  reputation  as  nurse  and 
doctress. 

In  the  great  storm  of  1717,  when  the  settlers' 
houses  were  almost  buried  in  the  snow,  it  is 
said  that  she  climbed  out  of  an  upper-story 
window  and  travelled  on  snow-shoes  through 
almost  impassable  drifts  to  Dudley,  Mass.,  to 
visit  a  sick  woman.  The  son  of  this  noble 
Bathsheba  was  "  Dr.  David,"  the  grandfather  of 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

In  1790,  Abiel  Holmes  was  married  to  the 
daughter  of  President  Stiles  of  Yale,  who  died 
without  children.  His  second  wife,  and  the 
mother  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  was  a  daugh 
ter  of  Hon.  Oliver  Wendell,  an  eminent  law 
yer.  He  was  descended  from  various  Wendells, 
Olivers,  Quinceys,  and  Bradstreets  —  names 
that  belonged  to  the  best  blue  blood  of  New 
England  —  and  his  wife  was  Mary  Jackson,  a 
daughter  of  Dorothy  Quincy,  the  "Dorothy 


14  OLIVER  WENDELL  HO'LMES. 

Q."  whom  Doctor  Holmes  has  immortalized  in 
his  poem.  And  just  here,  lest  some  of  my 
readers  may  have  forgotten  some  parts  of  this 
delicious  bit  of  family  portraiture,  I  am  tempted 
to  give  the  entire  poem  : 

Grandmother's  mother,  her  age   I   guess, 
Thirteen   summers  or  something  less ; 
Girlish  bust,  but   womanly    air, 
Smooth   square   forehead,  with   uprolled  hair, 
Lips  that   lover  has  never  kissed, 
Taper  fingers    and  slender   wrist, 
Hanging  sleeves   of  stiff  brocade  — 
So  they  painted   the    little    maid. 

On  her   hand   a   parrot  green 

Sits   unmoving  and   broods   serene ; 

Hold   up   the   canvas  full   in  view  — 

Look,   there's  a  rent   the   light  shines   through. 

Dark   with   a  century's   fringe   of    dust, 

That  was   a    Redcoat's  rapier   thrust  I 

Such   is   the   tale   the   lady   old, 

Dorothy's   daughter's  daughter  told. 

Who   the   painter   was   none  may  tell  — 
One   whose   best   was  not    over   well ; 
Hard   and   dry,  it   must   be  confessed, 
Flat   as   a  rose   that   has   long  been   pressed  ; 
Yet  in  her  cheek   the   hues   are   bright, 
Dainty  colors  of    red   and  white  ; 
And   in   her  slender  shape   are   seen 
Hint   and   promise   of  stately   mien. 


ANCESTRY.  15 


Look   not  on   her   with   eyes   of    scorn — 
Dorothy   Q.   was  a  lady   born ! 
Ay,   since   the  galloping   Normans  came, 
England's   annals   have   known  her  name ; 
And  still   to   the   three-hilled  rebel   town 
Dear   is   that   ancient   name's   renown, 
For  many   a  civic  wreath  they  won, 
The  youthful   sire   and   the  gray-haired  son. 

O   damsel   Dorothy!    Dorothy  Q., 
Strange   is  the  gift  that  I   owe  to  you; 
Such  a  gift  as   never  a   king 
Save  to  daughter  or  son  might   bring — 
All   my  tenure   of  heart  and   hand, 
All   my  title  to   house   and    land ; 
Mother  and  sister,  and   child  and  wife, 
And  joy  and  sorrow,  and   death  and  life.    ^ 

What  if  a  hundred   years  ago 

Those   close-shut   lips   had   answered,   no, 

When  forth  the   tremulous   question   came 

That  cost  the  maiden  her   Norman   name ; 

And  under    the   folds   that   look  so   still 

The   bodice  swelled   with   the  bosom's  thrill 

Should   I  be  I,   or   would  it   be 

One  tenth  another   to    nine  tenths   me? 

Soft  is  the   breath   of  a  maiden's    yes; 
Not  the   light  gossamer   stirs   with   less; 
But   never  a   cable   that   holds   so  fast, 
Through   all   the   battles   of   wave   and   blast, 
And   never    an   echo   of   speech    or   song 
That   lives   in   the    babbling  air    so   long  I 


16  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

There  were   tones   in  the   voice   that   whispered   then 
You   may  hear  to-day  in   a   hundred   men. 

0  lady  and   lover,   how   faint   and  far 
Your  images  hover,   and   here   we   are, 
Solid   and  stirring    in   flesh   and   bone, 
Edward's   and   Dorothy's  — all   their  own  — 
A  goodly  record  for   time   to   show 

Of  a  syllable  spoken   so   long   ago! 
Shall   I   bless   you,   Dorothy,   or   forgive, 
For  the   tender  whisper   that  bade   me   live  ? 

It  shall   be   a  blessing,   my  little   maid, 

1  will   heal    the    stab   of  the   Redcoat's   blade, 
And  freshen  the   gold   of  the   tarnished  frame, 
And  gild   with  a  rhyme  your    household   name, 
So  you  shall  smile   on  us,   brave   and   bright, 
As  first  you  greeted   the   morning's  light, 
And  live   untroubled  by  woes  and  fears, 
Through  a  second  youth  of  a   hundred  years. 

This  Dorothy  Quincy,  it  is  interesting  to 
note,  was  the  aunt  of  a  second  Dorothy 
Quincy,  who  married  Governor  Hancock.  The 
Wendells  were  of  Dutch  descent. 

Evert  Jansen  Wendell,  who  came  from  East 
Friesland  in  1645,  was  the  original  settler  in  Al 
bany.  From  the  church  records,  we  find  that 
he  was  the  Regerendo  Dijaken  in  1656,  and 
upon  one  of  the  windows  of  the  old  Dutch  church 


ANCESTRY.  17 

in  Albany,  the  arms  of  the  Wendells — a  ship 
riding  at  two  anchors  —  were  represented  in 
stained  glass.  Very  little  is  known  of  these  early 
ancestors,  but  the  name  is  still  an  influential 
one  among  the  old  Knickerbocker  families. 

Early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  Abraham 
and  Jacob  Wendell  left  their  Albany  home  and 
came  to  Boston.  It  is  said  that  Jacob  (the 
great-grandfather  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes)  fell 
in  love  with  his  future  wife,  the  daughter  of 
Doctor  James  Oliver,  when  she  was  only  nine 
years  of  age.  Seeing  her  at  play,  he  was  so 
impressed  by  her  beauty  and  grace  that,  like 
the  Jacob  of  old,  he  willingly  waited  the  flight 
of  years.  Twelve  children  blessed  this  happy 
union,  and  the  youngest  daughter  married  Wil 
liam  Phillips,  the  first  mayor  of  Boston,  and  the 
father  of  Wendell  Phillips. 

Fair   cousin,  Wendell   P., 

says  Doctor  Holmes  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
poem  of  1881  : 

Our  ancestors  were  dwellers  beside  the  Zuyder  Zee  ; 
Both  Grotius  and  Erasmus  were  countrymen  of  we, 
And  Vondel  was  our  namesake,  though  he  spelt  it  with  a  v. 


18  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Jacob  Wendell  became,  eventually,  one  of  the 
richest  merchants  of  Boston ;  was  a  member  of 
the  City  Council  and  colonel  of  the  Boston 
regiment.  His  son,  Oliver  (the  grandfather  of 
Doctor  Holmes),  was  born  in  1733,  and  after 
his  graduation  at  Harvard,  in  1753,  he  went 
into  business  with  his  father.  He  still  continued 
his  studies,  however,  and  preferring  a  professional 
life  to  that  of  a  business  man,  he  afterwards 
graduated  at  the  Law  School,  was  admitted  to 
the  bar,  and  soon  after  appointed  Judge  of  Pro 
bate  for  Suffolk  County.  In  Drake's  Old  Land 
marks  of  Boston,  we  find  that  Judge  Wendell 
was  a  selectman  during  the  siege  of  Boston,  and 
was  commissioned  by  General  Washington  to 
raise  a  company  of  men  to  watch  the  British 
after  the  evacuation,  so  that  no  spies  might  pass 
between  the  two  armies. 

The  original  Bradstreet  was  Simon,  the  old 
Charter  Governor,  who  married  Governor  Dud 
ley's  daughter  Anne.*  This  accomplished  lady, 
the  first  New  England  poetess,  and  frequently 

*  In  the  Harvard  College  Library  may  be  seen  a  copy  of  Anne  Bradstreet's 
poems,  which  passed  through  eight  editions.  The  extraordinary  title  of  her 
world-renowned  book  reads  as  follows:  "Several  poems  compiled  with  great 
variety  of  wit  and  learning,  full  of  delight,  wherein  especially  is  contained  a  com. 
plete  discourse  and  description  of  the  four  elements,  constitutions,  ages  of  man, 
seasons  of  the  year,  together  with  an  exact  epitome  of  the  three  first  monarchies, 


ANCESTRY.  19 

called  by  her  contemporaries  "  The  Tenth  Muse," 
was  Doctor  Holmes'  grandmother's  great-great- 
grandmother.* 

With  such  an  ancestry,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
surely  fulfils  all  the  conditions  of  "  a  man  of  fam 
ily,"  and  who  will  not  readily  agree  with  the 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table,  when  he  writes 
as  follows  : 

"I  go  for  the  man  with  the  family  portraits 
against  the  one  with  the  twenty-five  cent 
daguerreotype,  unless  I  find  out  that  the  last  is 
the  better  of  the  two.  I  go  for  the  man  that 
inherits  f armly~— trad itiofta—  and — the-  ctimtrlative 
humanities  of  at  least  four  or  five  generations. 
Above  all  things,  as  a  child,  he  should  have 
tumbled  about  in  a  library.  All  men  are  afraid 
of  books  that  have  not  handled  them  from 
infancy." 

viz.,  the  Assyrian,  Persian,  Grecian,  and  beginning  of  the  Roman  Commonweal 
to  the  end  of  their  last  king :  with  diverse  other  pleasant  and  serious  poems.  By 
a  gentlewoman  in  New  England.  This  talented  lady  was  the  ancestress  not 
only  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  but  also  of  the  Chanuings,  Danas  and 
Phillipses. 
*  From  notes  furnished  by  Doctor  Holmes. 


20  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BOYHOOD. 

IN    a    curious    little    almanac    for     1809    may 
still    be    seen    against    the    date   of   August 
29,   the   simple    record,  ("  Son    b."      Twice   before 
had    good    Parson    Holmes    recorded    in    similar 
manner    the    births    of    his    children,   for    Oliver 
\    Wendell,  who   bore    his   grandfather's  name,  was 
•^  his   third  child  ;    but  this  was   the   first   time  he 
could    write    "  son." 

A  few  years  later  another  son  came  —  the 
"  brother  John "  whose  wit  and  talents  have 
gladdened  so  many  hearts  —  and,  last  of  all, 
another  daughter  came  to  brighten  the  family 
circle  for  a  few  brief  years.  • 

Thejjjtle  O1ive,r_was_^a— bright,-  sunny-tempered 
child,  .highly  imaginative  and  extremely  sensi 
tive.  Speaking  of  his  childhood  in  after  years, 
and  of  certain  superstitious  fancies  that  always 
clung  to  him,  he  says : 


BOYHOOD.  21 

"  I  tell  you  it  was  not  so  pleasant  for  a  little 
boy  of  impressible  nature  to  go  up  to  bed  in 
an  old  gambrel-roofed  house,  with  untenanted, 
locked  upper  chambers,  and  a  most  ghostly 
garret ;  .  .  .  There  was  a  dark  store-room, 
too,  on  looking  through  the  keyhole  of  which 
I  could  dimly  see  a  heap  of  chairs  and  tables 
and  other  four-footed  things,  which  seemed  to 
me  to  have  rushed  in  there  frightened,  and  in 
their  fright  to  have  huddled  together  and  climbed 
up  on  each  other's  backs.  —  as  the  people  did 
in  that  awful  crush  where  so  many  were  killed 
at  the  execution  of  Holloway  and  Haggerty. 
Then  the  lady's  portrait  up-stairs  with  the  sword- 
thrusts  through  it  —  marks  of  the  British  offi 
cers'  rapiers  —  and  the  tall  mirror  in  which 
they  used  to  look  at  their  red  coats  —  confound 
them  for  smashing  its  mate!  —  and  the  deep, 
cunningly-wrought  arm-chair  in  which  Lord  Percy 
used  to  sit  while  his  hair  was  dressing ;  he 
was  a  gentleman,  and  always  had  it  covered 
with  a  large  peignoir  to  save  the  silk  covering 
my  grandmother  embroidered.  Then  the  little 
room  down-stairs  from  which  went  the  orders 
to  throw  up  a  bank  of  earth  on  the  hill  yon 
der  where  you  may  now  observe  a  granite  obe- 


22  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

lisk,  the  study  in  my  father's  time,  but  in  those 
days  the  council-chamber  of  armed  men,  some 
times  filled  with  soldiers.  Come  with  me,  and 
I  will  show  you  the  '  dents '  left  by  the  butts 
of  their  muskets  all  over  the  floor.  With  all  these 
suggestive  objects  round  me,  aided  by  the  wild 
stories  those  awful  country  boys  that  came  to  live 
in  our  service  brought  with  them — of  contracts 
written  in  blood  and  left  out  over  night  not  to 
be  found  the  next  .morning  (removed  by  the 
Evil  One  who  takes  his  nightly  round  among 
our  dwellings,  and  filed  away  for  future  use), 
of  dreams  coming  true,  of  death-signs,  of  appa 
ritions,  no^wojod«f-H^rat""Tny  imagination  got  ex 
cited,  and  I  was  liable  to  superstitious  fancies." 

What  some  of  these  fancies  were,  he  tells 
us  elsewhere  : 

"  I  waS^  afraid  -of,  ships.  Why,  I  could  never 
tell.  The  masts  looked  frightfully  tall,  but  they 
were  not  so  tall  as  the  steeple  of  our  old  yel 
low  meeting-house.  At  any  rate,  I  used  to  hide 
my  eyes  from  the  sloops  and  schooners  that 
were  wont  to  lie  at  the  end  of  the  bridge,  and 
I  confess  that  traces  of  this  undefined  terror 
lasted  very  long.  One  other  source  of  alarm 
had  a  still  more  fearful  significance.  There  was 


BOYHOOD.  23 

a  great  wooden  hand,  a  glovemaker's  sign,  which 
used  to  swing  and  creak  in  the  blast  as  it  hung 
from  a  pillar  before  a  certain  shop  a  mile  or 
two  outside  of  the  city.  Oh,  the  dreadful  hand  ! 
Always  hanging  there  ready  to  catch  up  a  little 
boy  who  would  come  home  to  supper  no  more, 
nor  yet  to  bed,  whose  porringer  would  be  laid 
away  empty  thenceforth,  and  his  half-worn  shoes 
wait  until  his  small  brother  grew  to  fit  them. 

"  As  for  all  manner  of  superstitious  observances, 
I  used  once  to  think  I  must  have  been  pecul 
iar  in  having  such  a  list  of  them,  but  I 
now  believe  that  half  the  children  of  the  same 
age  go  through  the  same  experiences.  No 
Roman  soothsayer  ever  had  such  a  catalogue 
of  omens  as  I  found  in  the  sibylline  leaves  of 
my  childhood.  That  trick  of  throwing  a  stone 
at  a  tree  and  attaching  some  mighty  issue  to 
hitting  or  missing,  which  you  will  find  men 
tioned  in  one  or  more  biographies,  I  well 
remember.  Stepping  on  or  over  certain  partic 
ular  things  or  spots  —  Doctor  Johnson's  special 
weakness  —  I  got  the  habit  of  at  a  very  early 
age. 

"  With  these  follies  mingled  sweet  delusions 
which  I  loved  so  well  I  would  not  outgrow 


24  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

them,  even  when  it  required  a  voluntary  effort 
to  put  a  momentary  trust  in  them.  Here  is 
one  which  I  cannot  help  telling  you. 

"  The  firing  of  the  great  guns  at  the  Navy 
Yard  is  easily  heard  at  the  place  where  I  was 
born  and  lived.  'There  is  a  ship  of  war  come 
in,'  they  used  to  say,  when  they  heard  them. 
Of  course  I  supposed  that  such  vessels  came 
in  unexpectedly,  after  indefinite  years  of  absence, 
suddenly  as  falling  stones ;  and  that  the  great 
guns  roared  in  their  astonishment  and  delight 
at  the  sight  of  the  old  war-ship  splitting  the 
bay  with  her  cut-water.  Now,  the  sloop-of-war 
the  Wasp,  Captain  Blakely,  after  gloriously 
capturing  the  Reindeer  and  the  Avon,  had 
disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  ocean,  and 
was  supposed  to  be  lost.  But  there  was  no 
proof  of  it,  and  of  course  for  a  time,  hopes 
were  entertained  that  she  might  be  heard  from. 
Long  after  the  last  real  chance  had  utterly 
vanished,  I  pleased  myself  with  the  fond  illu 
sion  that  somewhere  on  the  waste  of  waters 
she  was  still  floating,  and  there  were  years 
during  which  I  never  heard  the  sound  of  the 
great  guns  booming  inland  from  the  Navy  Yard 
without  saying  to  myself,  'the  Wasp  has  come!' 


BOYHOOD.  25 

and  almost  thinking  I  could  see  her  as  she 
rolled  in,  crumpling  the  waters  before  her, 
weather-beaten,  barnacled,  with  shattered  spars 
and  threadbare  canvas,  welcomed  by  the  shouts 
and  tears  of  thousands.  This  was  one  of  those 
dreams  that  I  mused  and  never  told.  Let 
me  make  a  clean  breast  of  it  now,  and  say, 
that,  so  late  as  to  have  outgrown  childhood, 
perhaps  to  have  got  far  on  towards  manhood, 
when  the  roar  of  the  cannon  has  struck 
suddenly  on  my  ear,  I  have  started  -  with  a 
thrill  of  vague  expectation  and  tremulous 
delight,  and  the  long  unspoken  words  have  artic 
ulated  themselves  in  the  mind's  dumb  whisper, 
The  Wasp  has  come ! 

"Yes;  children  believe  plenty  of  queer  things. 
I  suppose  all  of  you  have  had  the  pocket-book 
fever  when  you  were  little  ?  What  do  I  mean  ? 
Why,  ripping  up  old  pocket-books  in  the  firm 
belief  that  bank-bills  to  an  immense  amount 
were  hidden  in  them.  So,  too,  you  must  all 
remember  some  splendid  unfulfilled  promise  of 
somebody  or  other,  which  fed  you  with  hopes 
perhaps  for  years,  and  which  left  a  blank  in 
your  life  which  nothing  has  ever  filled  up. 
O.  T.  quitted  our  household  carrying  with  him 


26  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  passionate  regrets  of  the  more  youthful 
members.  He  was  an  ingenious  youngster ; 
wrote  wonderful  copies,  and  carved  the  two 
initials  given  above  with  great  skill  on  all 
available  surfaces.  I  thought,  by  the  way,  they 
were  all  gone,  but  the  other  day  I  found  them 
on  a  certain  door.  How  it  surprised  me  to 
find  them  so  near  the  ground !  I  had  thought 
the  boy  of  no  trivial  dimensions.  Well,  O.  T., 
when  he  went,  made  a  solemn  promise  to  two 
of  us.  I  was  to  have  a  ship,  and  the  other 
a  martin  house  (last  syllable  pronounced  as  in 
the  word  tiri).  Neither  ever  came ;  but  oh !  how 
many  and  many  a  time  I  have  stolen  to  the 
corner  —  the  cars  pass  close  by  it  at  this  time 
—  and  looked  up  that  long  avenue,  thinking 
that  he  must  be  coming  now,  almost  sure  as 
I  turned  to  look  northward  that  there  he  would 
be,  trudging  toward  me,  the  ship  in  one  hand 
and  the  mar//#  house  in  the  other !  " 
x~  At  an  early  age  the  merry,  restless  little 

v    jfellow    was    sent   to   a   neighboring   school,   kept 
-j  / 
Aby  Ma'am  Prentiss,  a  good,  motherly   old  dame, 

'who  ruled  her  little  flock,  not  with  a  scourge 
;  of  birches,  but  with  a  long  willow  rod  that 
\  reached  quite  across  the  schoolroom,  "  remind- 


BOYHOOD.  27 

ing,*  rather  than  chastening."  Among  her  pupils 
was  Alfred  Lee,  afterwards  the  beloved  Bishop 
of  Delaware. 

"  It  is  by  little  things,"  says  the  Autocrat, 
"  that  we  know  ourselves ;  a  soul  would  very 
probably  mistake  itself  for  another,  when  once 
disembodied,  were  it  not  for  individual  experi 
ences  which  differ  from  those  of  others  only  in 
details  seemingly  trivial.  All  of  us  have  been 
thirsty  thousands  of  times,  and  felt  with  Pindar, 
that  water  was  the  best  of  things.  I  alone, 
as  I  think,  of  all  mankind,  remember  one  par 
ticular  pailful  of  water,  flavored  with  the  white- 
pine  of  which  the  pail  was  made,  and  the 
brown  mug  out  of  which  one  Edmund,  a  red- 
faced  and  curly-haired  boy,  was  averred  to  "have 
bitten  a  fragment  in  his  haste  to  drink ;  it 
being  then  high  summer,  and  little  full-blooded 
boys  feeling  very  warm  and  porous  in  the  low 
studded  schoolroom  where  Dame  Prentiss,  dead 
and  gone,  ruled  over  young  children.  Thirst 
belongs  to  humanity  everywhere,  in  all  ages, 
but  that  white-pine  pail  and  that  brown  mug 
belong  to  me  in  particular." 

The  next  school  to  which   the  Cambridge  pas- 

V, 

*From  notes  furnished  by  Doctor  Holmes. 


28  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

tor  sent  his  little  son  was  kept  by  Williarrx 
Biglow,  a  man  of  considerable  scholarship  and 
much  native  wit.  Five  years  were  spent  at 
a  school,  in  Cambridgeport,  which  was  kept 
by  several  successive  teachers,  and  it  was  here, 
\\as  schoolmates,  that  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
\  |(irst  met  Margaret  Fuller  and  Richard  Henry 

ana. 

"I  was  moderately  studious,"  says  Doctor 
Holmes,  and  very  fond  of  reading  stories,  which 
I  sometimes  did  in  school  hours.  I  was  fond 
also  of  whispering,  and  my  desk  bore  sad  wit 
ness  to  my  passion  for  whittling.  For  these 
misdemeanors  I  sometimes  had  a  visitation  from 
the  ferule,  and  once  when  a  Gunter's  scale 
was  used  for  this  purpose,  it  flew  to  pieces  as 
it  came  down  on  my  palm."* 

It  was  about  this  time,  doubtless,  that  the 
Autocrat  learned  that  important  fact  about  the 
"hat."  . 

"  I  was  once  equipped,"  he  says,  "  in  a  hat 
of  Leghorn  straw,  having  a  brim  of  much  wider 
dimensions  than  were  usual  at  that  time,  and 
sent,  to  school  in  that  portion  of  my  native 
town  which  lies  nearest  to  the  metropolis.  On 

*From  notes  furnished  by  Doctor  Holmes. 


BOYHOOD.  29 

my  way  I  was  met  by  a  '  Port- Chuck,'  as  we 
used  to  call  the  young  gentlemen  of  that  locality, 
and  the  following  dialogue  ensued : 

"  TAe  Port-Chuck:  'Hullo,  you  sir,  joo  know 
th'  wus  goin'  to  be  a  race  to-morrah  ? ' 

" Myself:  'No.  Who's  goin'  to  run,  'n'  wher' 
's  't  goin'  to  be  ? ' 

"  The  Port-Chuck:  'Squire  Mico  'n'  Doctor 
Williams,  round  the  brim  o'  your  hat.' 

"  These  two  much-respected  gentlemen  being 
the  oldest  inhabitants  at  that  time,  and  the 
alleged  race-course  being  out  of  the  question, 
the  Port-Chuck  also  winking  and  thrusting  his 
tongue  into  his  cheek,  I  perceived  that  I  had 
been  trifled  with,  and  the  effect  has  been  to 
make  me  sensitive  and  observant  respecting 
this  article  ever  since.  The  hat  is  the  vulner 
able  point  of  the  artificial  integument." 


30  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER   III. 

EARLY   RECOLLECTIONS. 

OF   the  boyhood  of  Doctor  Holmes  we  have 
many  delightful  glimpses. 

"  Like  other  boys  in  the  country,"  he  tells 
us,  "  I  had  my  patch  of  ground  to  which  in 
the  springtime  I  intrusted  the  seeds  furnished 
me  with  a  confident  trust  in  their  resurrection 
and  glorification  in  the  better  world  of  summer. 
But  I  soon  found  that  my  lines  had  fallen  in 
a  place  where  a  vegetable  growth  had  to  run 
the  gauntlet  of  as  many  foes  and  trials  as  a 
Christian  pilgrim.  Flowers  would  not  blow ; 
daffodils  perished  like  criminals  in  their  con 
demned  caps,  without  their  petals  ever  seeing 
daylight;  roses  were  disfigured  with  monstrous 
protrusions  through  their  very  centres,  some 
thing  that  looked  like  a  second  bud  pushing 
through  the  middle  of  the  corolla  ;  lettuces  and 
cabbages  would  not  head  ;  radishes  knotted 


EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS.  31 

themselves  until  they  looked  like  centenarians' 
fringes  ;  and  on  every  stem,  on  every  leaf,  and 
both  sides  of  it,  and  at  the  root  of  everything 
that  grew,  was  a  professional  specialist  in  the 
shape  of  grub,  caterpillar,  aphis,  or  other  expert, 
whose  business  it  was  to  devour  that  particular 
part,  and  help  murder  the  whole  attempt  at  veg 
etation.  .  .  .  Yet  Nature  is  never  wholly 
unkind.  Economical  as  she  was  in  my  unpar- 
adised  Eden,  hard  as  it  was  to  make  some  of 
my  floral  houris  unveil,  still  the  damask  roses 
-sweetened  the  June  breezes,  the  bladed  and 
plumed  flower-de-luces  unfolded  their  close-wrapped 
cones,  and  larkspurs,  and  lupins,  lady's  delights 
—  plebeian  manifestations  of  the  pansy — self- 
sowing  marigolds,  hollyhocks  ;  the  forest  flowers 
of  two  seasons,  and  the  perennial  lilacs  and 
syringas,  all  whispered  to  the  winds  blowing 
over  them  that  some  caressing  presence  was 
around  me. 

"Beyond  the  garden  was  the  field,  a  vast 
domain  of  four  acres  or  thereabouts  by  the  meas 
urement  of  after  years,  bordered  to  the  north 
by  a  fathomless  chasm  —  the  ditch  the  base-ball 
players  of  the  present  era  jump  over ;  on  the 
east  by  unexplored  territory ;  on  the  south  by 


S2  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

a  barren  enclosure,  where  the  red  sorrel  pro 
claimed  liberty  and  equality  under  its  drapeau 
rouge,  and  succeeded  in  establishing  a  vegetable 
commune  where  all  were  alike,  poor,  mean,  sour, 
and  uninteresting ;  and  on  the  west  by  the  Com 
mon,  not  then  disgraced  by  jealous  enclosures 
which  make  it  look  like  a  cattle-market. 

"  Beyond,  as  I  looked  round,  were  the  col 
leges,  the  meeting-house,  the  little  square  mar 
ket-house,  long  vanished,  the  burial  ground 
where  the  dead  presidents  stretched  their  weary 
bones  under  epitaphs  stretched  out  at  as  full 
length  as  their  subjects  ;  the  pretty  church 
where  the  gouty  Tories  used  to  kneel  on  their 
hassocks,  the  district  schoolhouse,  and  hard  by 
it  Ma'am  Hancock's  cottage,  never  so  called  in 
those  days,  but  rather  '  ten-footer '  ;  then 
houses  scattered  near  and  far,  open  spaces,  the 
shadowy  elms,  round  hilltops  in  the  distance, 
and  over  all  the  great  bowl  of  the  sky.  Mind 
you,  this  was  the  WORLD,  as  I  first  knew  it ; 
terra  veteribus  cogirita,  as  Mr.  Arrowsmith  would 
have  called  it,  if  he  had  mapped  the  universe 
of  my  infancy." 

"  When  I  was  of  smallest  dimensions,"  he 
says  at  another  time,  "  and  wont  to  ride  impacted 


EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS.  33 

between  the  knees  of  fond  parental  pair,  we 
would  sometimes  cross  the  bridge  to  the  next 
village  town  and  stop  opposite  a  low,  brown, 
gambrel-roofed  cottage.  Out  of  it  would  come 
one  Sally,  sister  of  its  swarthy  tenant,  swarthy 
herself,  sjiady-lipped,  sad-voiced,  and  bending 
over  her  flower  bed,  would  gather  a  '  posy,' 
as  she  called  it,  for  the  little  boy.  Sally  lies 
in  the  churchyard,  with  a  slab  of  blue  slate  at 
her  head,  lichen-crusted,  and  leaning  a  little 
within  the  last  few  years.  Cottage,  garden-bed, 
posies,  grenadier-like  rows  of  seeding-onions  — 
stateliest  of  vegetables  —  all  are  gone,  but  the 
breath  of  a  marigold  brings  them  all  back  to 
me." 

Of  Cambridge  at  this  time,  James  Russell 
Lowell,  in  his  Fireside  Travels,  tells  us :  "  It 
was  still  a  country  village  with  its  own  habits 
and  traditions,  not  yet  feeling  too  strongly  the 
force  of  suburban  gravitation.  Approaching  it 
from  the  west,  by  what  was  then  called  the 
New  Road,  you  would  pause  on  the  brow  of 
Symond's  Hill  to  enjoy  a  view  singularly  sooth 
ing  and  placid.  In  front  of  you  lay  the  town, 
tufted  with  elms,  lindens,  and  horse-chestnuts, 
which  had  seen  Massachusetts  a  colony,  and 


34  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

were  fortunately  unable  to  emigrate  with  the 
Tories  by  whom,  or  by  whose  fathers  they  were 
planted.  Over  it  rose  the  noisy  belfry  of  the 
College,  the  square,  brown  tower  of  the  Epis 
copal  Church,  and  the  slim  yellow  spire  of  the 
parish  meeting-house.  On  your  right  the  Charles 
slipped  smoothly  through  green  and  purple  salt 
meadows,  darkened  here  and  there  with  the 
blossoming  black  grass  as  with  a  stranded  cloud- 
shadow.  To  your  left  upon  the  Old  Road  you 
saw  some  half-dozen  dignified  old  houses  of  the 
colonial  time,  all  comfortably  fronting  south 
ward.  .  .  .  We  called  it  '  the  Village '  then, 
and  it  was  essentially  an  English  village  —  quiet, 
unspeculative,  without  enterprise,  sufficing  to 
itself,  and  only  showing  such  differences  from 
the  original  type  as  the  public  school  and  the 
system  of  town  government  might  superinduce. 
A  few  houses,  chiefly  old,  stood  around  the 
bare  common,  with  ample  elbow-room,  and  old 
women,  capped  and  spectacled,  still  peered 
through  the  same  windows  from  which  they  had 
watched  Lord  Percy's  artillery  rumble  by  to 
Lexington,  or  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  hand 
some  Virginia  general  who  had  come  to  wield 
our  homespun  Saxon  chivalry.  The  hooks  were 


EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS.  35 

to  be  seen  from  which  had  swung  the  ham 
mocks  of  Burgoyne's  captive  red-coats.  If  mem 
ory  does  not  deceive  me,  women  still  washed 
clothes  in  the  town  spring,  clear  as  that  of 
Bandusia.  One  coach  sufficed  for  all  the  travel 
to  the  metropolis.  Commencement  had  not 
ceased  to  be  the  great  holiday  of  the  Boston 
commonwealth,  and  a  fitting  one  it  was.  The 
students  (scholars  they  were  called  then)  wore 
their  sober  uniform,  not  ostentatiously  distinctive, 
or  capable  of  rousing  democratic  envy  ;  and 
the  old  lines  of  caste  were  blurred  rather  than 
rubbed  out,  as  servitor  was  softened  into  bene 
ficiary.  Was  it  possible  for  us  in  those  days 
to  conceive  of  a  greater  potentate  than  the 
president  of  the  University,  in  his  square  doc 
tor's  cap,  that  still  filially  recalled  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  ?  " 

The  father  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  a 
Calvanist,  not  indeed  of  the  severest  east,  but 
still  strictly  "  orthodox "  in  all  his  religious 
views,  and  when  Oliver,  his  elder  son,  was  fif 
teen  years  of  age,  he  sent  him  to  the  Phillips 
Academy  in  Andover,  thinking  that  the  relig 
ious  atmosphere  there  was  less  heretical  than 
\  at  Phillips  Academy,  Exeter,  where  Arminian 

x/ 


36  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

tendencies  were  just  beginning  to  show  them 
selves. 

"  I  have  some  recollections  of  Andover,  pleas 
ant  and  other,"  says  Doctor  Holmes.  "I  won 
der  if  the  old  Seminary  clock  strikes  as  slowly 
as  it  used  to.  My  room-mate  thought,  when 
he  first  came,  it  was  the  bell  tolling  deaths, 
and  people's  ages,  as  they  do  in  the  country. 
He  swore  (ministers'  sons  get  so  familiar  with 
good  words  that  they  are  apt  to  handle  them 
carelessly),  that  the  children  were  dying  by  the 
dozen  of  all  ages,  from  one  to  twelve,  and  ran 
off  next  day  in  recess  when  it  began  to  strike 
eleven,  but  was  caught  before  the  clock  got 
through  striking.  At  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
down  in  town,  is,  or  was,  a  tidy  old  elm,  which 
was  said  to  have  been  hooped  with  iron  to  pro 
tect  it  from  Indian  tomahawks  (Credab  Hahmie- 
ntannus),  and  to  have  grown  round  its  hoops 
and  buried  them  in  its  wood." 

The  extreme  conscientiousness  of  the  boy  is 
strikingly  depicted  in  the  following  revelation  : 

"  The  first  unequivocal  act  of  wrong  that  has 
left  its  trace  in  my  memory  was  this  :  refusing 
a  small  favor  asked  of  me  —  nothing  more  than 
telling  what  had  happened  at  school  one  morn- 


EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS.  37 

ing.  No  matter  who  asked  it ;  but  there  were 
circumstances  which  saddened  and  awed  me.  I 
had  no  heart  to  speak ;  I  faltered  some  miser 
able,  perhaps  petulant  excuse,  stole  away,  and 
the  first  battle  of  life  was  lost. 

"  What  remorse  followed  I  need  not  tell. 
Then  and  there  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge, 
I  first  consciously  took  Sin  by  the  hand  and 
turned  my  back  on  Duty.  Time  has  led  me 
to  look  upon  my  offence  more  leniently ;  I  do 
not  believe  it  or  any  other  childish  wrong  is 
infinite,  as  some  have  pretended,  but  infinitely 
finite.  Yet,  if  I  had  but  won  that  first  battle!" 

And  what  a  charming  picture  he  gives  us 
of  the  peaceful,  hallowing  influences  about  him 
in  that  quiet  old  parsonage ! 

"  The  Puritan  '  Sabbath/  as  everybody  knows, 
began  at  '  sundown '  on  Saturday  evening.  To 
such  observances  of  it-4~  was  born  and  bred. 
As  the  large,  round  disk  of  day  declined,  a 
stillness,  a  solemnity,  a  somewhat  melancholy 
hush  came  over  us  all.  It  was. time  for  work 
to  cease,  and  for  playthings  to  be  put  away. 
The  world  of  active  life  passed  into  the  shadow 
of  an  eclipse,  not  to  emerge  until  the  sun 
should  sink  again  beneath  the  horizon. 


38  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"  It  was  in  the  stillness  of  the  world  without 
and  of  the  soul  within  that  the  pulsating  lul 
laby  of  the  evening  crickets  used  to  make 
itself  most  distinctly  heard  —  so  that  I  well 
remember  I  used  to  think  that  the  purring  of 
these  little  creatures,  which  mingled  with  the 
batrachian  hymns  from  the  neighboring  swamps, 
was  peculiar  to  Saturday  evenings.  I  don't 
know  that  anything  could  give  a  clearer  idea 
of  the  quieting  and  subduing  effect  of  the  old 
habit  of  observance  of  what  was  considered 
holy  time,  than  this  strange,  childish  fancy." 

Had  all  the  clergymen  who  visited  the  par 
sonage  been  as  true  to  their  profession  as  his 
own  dear  father,  the  thoughtful,  impressible  boy 
might,  very  possibly,  have  devoted  his  brilliant 
talents  to  the  ministry.  "  It  was  a  real  delight," 
he  says,  "to  have  one  of  those  good,  hearty, 
:happy,  benignant  old  clergymen  pass  the  Sunday 
with  us,  and  I  can  remember  one  whose  advent 
•made  the  day  feel  almost  like  '  Thanksgiving.  ' 
But  now  and  then  would  come  along  a  clerical 
(visitor  with  a  sad  face  and  a  wailing  voice, 
Which  sounded  exactly  as  if  somebody  must  be 
\  lying  dead  up-stairs,  who  took  no  interest  in 
us  children,  except  a  painful  one,  as  being  in  a 


EARLY  RECOLLECTIONS.  39 

bad  way  with  our  cheery  looks,  and  did  more 
to  unchristianize  us  with  his  woebegone  ways 
than  all  his  sermons  were  like  to  accomplish  in 
the  other  direction.  I  remember  one  in  partic 
ular  who  twitted  me  so  with  my  blessings  as 
a  Christian  child,  and  whined  so  to  me  about 
the  naked  black  children,  that  he  did  more  in 
that  one  day  to  make  me  a  heathen  than  he 
had  ever  done  in  a  month  to  make  a  Chris 
tian  out  of  an  infant  Hottentot.  I  miht^haye. 


been    a    minister    myself   for    aught     I  Jcnow,    if_ 
this   clergyman  had   not    looked   and    talked,   w 
~like~an  undertaker." 

An  exercisewritten  while  at  Andover,  shows  at 
what  an  early  age  he  attempted  versification.  It 
is  a  translation  from  the  first  book  of  Virgil's 
ALneid,  and  reads  as  smoothly  as  any  lines  of 
Pope.  The  following  extract  shows  the  angry  god 
giving  his  orders  to  Zephyrus  and  Eurus : 

Is  this   your  glory  in  a   noble   line, 

To  leave   your  confines   and  to    ravage  mine  ? 

Whom   I  —  but    let  these   troubled  waves  subside  — 

Another   tempest   and   I'll   quell   your  pride  I 

Go   bear   our   message   to  your   master's   ear, 

That   wide   as   ocean   I   am    despot   here ; 

Let   him   sit   monarch   in   his  barren   caves  I 

I  wield  the  trident  and   control    the   waves. 


40  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OTHER   REMINISCENCES. 

/^TN   his   vacations    the    inquiring    mind   of    the 
\  X     young  student  had  made  "  strange  acquaint- 
|  ances"   in   a   certain   book   infirmary   up    in  the 
1  attic  of  the  gambrel-roofed  house. 
I      "  The    Negro    Plot    at    New    York"    he    says, 
v<  helped    to    implant   a   feeling   in    me   which    it 
took   Mr.    Garrison   a   good   many  years   to  root 
out.     Thinks    I    to  myself,   an   old   novel   which 
has   been   attributed   to   a   famous   statesman,  in 
troduced    me   to   a   world    of    fiction   which    was 
not   represented   on   the    shelves   of    the    library 
proper,    unless    perhaps   by   Caelebs   in  search  of 
a    Wife,  or  allegories  of  the  bitter  tonic  class  " 

.Then  there  was  an  old,  old  Latin  alchemy 
book,  with  the  manuscript  annotations  of  some 
ancient  Rosicrucian,  "  In  the  pages  of  which,"  he 
says,  "  I  had  a  vague  notion  that  I  might  find 
the  mighty  secret  of  the  Lapis  Philosophorum, 


OTHER  REMINISCENCES.  41 

otherwise  called  Chaos,  the  Dragon,  the  Green 
Lion,  the  Quinta  Essentia,  the  Soap  of  Sages, 
the  vinegar  of  Heavenly  Grace,  the  Egg,  the 
Old  Man,  the  Sun,  the  Moon,  and  by  all  man 
ner  of  odd  aliases,  as  I  am  assured  by  the 
plethoric  little  book  before  me,  in  parchment 
covers  browned  like  a  meerschaum  with  the 
smoke  of  furnaces,  and  the  thumbing  of  dead 
gold-seekers,  and  the  fingering  of  bony-handed 
book-misers,  and  the  long  intervals  of  dusty 
slumber  on  the  shelves  of  the  bonquiniste" 

"  I  have  never  lost  my  taste  for  alchemy," 
he  adds,  "  since  I  first  got  hold  of  the  Palla 
dium  Spagyricum  of  Peter  John  Faber,  and  sought 
—  in  vain,  it  is  true  —  through  its  pages  for  a 
clear,  intelligible,  and  practical  statement  of  how 
I  could  turn  my  lead  sinkers  and  the  weights 
of  the  tall  kitchen  clock  into  good  yellow  gold 
specific  gravity,  19.2,  and  exchangeable  for  what 
ever  I  then  wanted,  and  for  many  more  things 
than  I  was  then  aware  of. 

"One  of  the  greatest  pleasures  of  childhood 
is  found  in  the  mysteries  which  it  hides  from 
the  scepticism  of  the  elders,  and  works  up  into 
small  mythologies  of  its  own.  I  have  seen  all 
this  played  over  again  in  adult  life,  the  same 


42  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

delightful  bewilderment  of  semi-emotional  belief 
in  listening  to  the  gaseous  promises  of  this  or 
that  fantastic  system,  that  I  found  in  the  pleas 
ing  mirages  conjured  up  for  me  by  the  ragged 
old  volume  I  used  to  pore  over  in  the  south 
east  attic  chamber." 

There  are  other  reminiscences  of  these  days 
that  show  us  not  only  the  outward  surroundings, 
but  the  inner  workings  of  the  boy's  mind. 

"  The  great  Destroyer,"  he  says,  "  had  come 
near  me,  but  never  so  as  to  be  distinctly  seen 
and  remembered  during  my  tender  years.  There 
flits  dimly  before  me  the  image  of  a  little  girl 
whose  name  even  I  have  forgotten,  a  schoolmate 
whom  we  missed  one  day,  and  were  told  that 
she  had  died.  But  what  death  was  I  never 
had  any  very  distinct  idea  until  one  day  I 
climbed  the  low  stone-wall  of  the  old  burial 
ground  and  mingled  with  a  group  that  were 
looking  into  a  very  deep,  long,  narrow  hole, 
dug  down  through  the  green  sod,  down  through 
the  brown  loam,  down  through  the  yellow  gravel, 
and  there  at  the  bottom  was  an  oblong  red 
box,  and  a  still,  sharp,  white  face  of  a  young 
man  seen  through  an  opening  at  one  end  of  it. 

*'  When    the    lid   was    closed,   and   the    gravel 


OTHER  REMINISCENCES.  43 

and  stones  rattled  down  pell-mell,  and  the  woman 
in  black  who  was  crying  and  wringing  her 
hands  went  off  with  the  other  mourners,  and 
left  him,  then  I  felt  that  I  had  seen  Death, 
and  should  never  forget  him." 

There  were  certain  sounds  too,  he  tells  us, 
that  had  "a  mysterious  suggestiveness "  to  him. 
One  was  the  "  creaking  of  the  woodsleds,  bring 
ing  their  loads  of  oak  and  walnut  from  the 
country,  as  the  slow-swinging  oxen  trailed  them 
along  over  the  complaining  snow  in  the  cold, 
brown  light  of  early  morning.  Lying  in  bed 
and  listening  to  their  dreary  music  had  a 
pleasure  in  it  akin  to  the  Lucretian  luxury,  or 
that  which  Byron  speaks  of  as  to  be  enjoyed 
in  looking  on  at  a  battle  by  one  'who  hath 
no  friend,  no  brother  there.' 

"Yes,  and  there  was  still  another  sound 
which  mingled  its  solemn  cadences  with  the 
waking  and  sleeping  dreams  of  my  boyhood. 
It  was  heard  only  at  times,  a  deep,  muffled 
roar,  which  rose  and  fell,  not  loud,  but  vast ; 
a  whistling  boy  would  have  drowned  it  for  his 
next  neighbor,  but  it  must  have  been  heard 
over  the  space  of  a  hundred  square  miles.  I 
used  to  wonder  what  this  might  be.  Could  it 


44  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

be  the  roar  of  the  thousand  wheels  and  the  ten 
thousand  footsteps  jarring  and  trampling  along 
the  stones  of  the  neighboring  city  ?  That  would 
be  continuous ;  but  this,  as  I  have  said,  rose 
and  fell  in  regular  rhythm.  I  remember  being 
told,  and  I  suppose  this  to  have  been  the  true 
solution,  that  it  was  the  sound  of  the  waves 
after  a  high  wind  breaking  on  the  long  beaches 
many  miles  distant." 

After  a  year's  study  at  Andover,  he  was 
fully  prepared  to  enter  Harvard  University. 

In  the  Charlestown  Navy  Yard,  at  this  time, 
was  -the  old  frigate  Constitution,  which  the 
government  purposed  to  break  up  as  unfit  for 
service,  thoughtless  of  the  desecration  : 

There  was   an  hour  when  patriots  dared   profane 
The  mast   that   Britain   strove   to   bow  in  vain, 

And  one,  who   listened  to   the   tale    of   shame, 

• 

Whose   heart   still    answered   to   that  sacred  name, 

Whose   eye  still   followed  o'er  his   country's  tides 

Thy  glorious   flag,   our   brave    Old  Ironsides! 

From  yon  lone    attic,    on   a   summer's   morn, 

Thus  mocked  the   spoilers   with   his  school-boy  scorn: 

Ay,   tear  her  tattered   ensign   down  I 
Long  has  it   waved  on   high, 
And  many  an  eye   has   danced  to   see 
That  banner   in   the   sky ; 


OTHER  REMINISCENCES.  45 

Beneath   it   rung  the  battle   shout, 

And  burst  the   cannon's   roar; 
The  meteor   of  the   ocean   air 

Shall  sweep  the  clouds  no  more! 

Her  deck,  once  red  with  heroes'  blood, 

Where  knelt  the   vanquished  foe, 
When  winds  were   hurrying  o'er  the   flood, 

And  waves   were   white   below, 
No  more  shall  feel  the  victor's   tread, 

Or   know  the  conquered  knee  ; 
The  harpies  of  the  shore  shall  pluck 

The  eagle  of  the  sea. 

Oh,  better  that  her  shattered  hulk 

Should   sink  beneath  the   wave ; 
Her  thunders  shook   the   mighty   deep, 

And  there   should  be  her   grave; 
Nail   to   the  mast   her  holy  flag, 

Set  every   thread-bare   sail, 
And  give   her  to  the  god  of  storms 

The  lightning  and   the  galel 

This  stirring  poem  —  the  first  to  make  him 
known  —  was  written  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
in  1830,  "with  a  pencil  in  the  White  Chamber 
Stans  pede  in  uno,  pretty  nearly,"  and  was 
published  in  the  Boston  Advertiser.  From  these 
columns  it  was  extensively  copied  by  other 
newspapers  throughout  the  country,  and  hand 
bills  containing  the  verses  were  circulated  in 


46  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Washington.  The  eloquent,  patriotic  outburst 
not  only  brought  instant  fame  to  the  young 
poet,  but  so  thoroughly  aroused  the  heart  of 
the  people  that  the  grand  old  vessel  was  saved 
from  destruction. 

The  "  schoolboy  "  had  already  entered  Harvard 
College,    and     among      his     classmates     in     that 
famous  class    of   1829,  were    Benjamin  R.  Curtis, 
afterwards   Judge    of  the    Supreme   Court,  James 
Freeman    Clarke,   Chandler    Robbins,    Samuel   F. 
Smith    (the    author    of     "  My '  country,     'tis    of       x 
thee "),  G.   T.    Bigelow   (Judge   of  the   Supreme/ y 
Court  of  Massachusetts),  Gv  TV  Davis,   and  Ben 
jamin  Pierce. 

In  the  class  just  below  him  (1830)  was 
Charles  Sumner ;  and  his  cousin,  Wendell  Phil 
lips,  with  John  Lothrop  Motley,  entered  Har 
vard  during  his  Junior  year.  George  Ticknor 
was  one  of  his  instructors,  and  Josiah  Quincy 
became  president  of  the  college  before  he  grad 
uated. 

Throughout    his   whole    college     course   Oliver 

Wendell Holmes    maintained   an    excellent    rank 

in  scholarship.  He  was  a  frequent  contributor 
to  the  college  periodicals,  and  delivered  several 
poems  upon  a  variety  of  subjects.  One  of 


OTHER  REMINISCENCES.  47 

these  was  given  before  the  "  Hasty  Pudding 
Club,"  and  another  entitled  "Forgotten  Days," 
at  an  "  Exhibition."  He  jwas  the  class  poet ; 
was  called  upon  to  write  the  poem  at  Com 
mencement,  and  was  one  of  the  sixteen  chosen 
into  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society.* 

After  his  graduation,  he  studied  law  one  year 
in  the  Dane  Law  School  of  Harvard  College.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  The  Collegian,  a  peri 
odical  published  by  a  number  of  the  Harvard 
under-graduates,  was  started  at  Cambridge.  To 
this  paper  the  young  law  student  sent  numerous 
anonymous  contributions,  among  them  "  Evening, 
by  a  Tailor,"  "The  Height  of  the  Ridiculous," 
"The  Meeting  of  the  Dryads,"  and  "The 
Spectre  Pig."  A  brilliant  little  journal  it  must 
have  been  with  Holmes'  inimitable  outbursts  of 
wit,  "  Lochfast's "  (William  H.  Simmons)  trans 
lations  from  Schiller,  and  the  numerous  pen 
thrusts  from  John  O.  Sargent,  Robert  Haber- 
sham  and  Theodore  William  Snow,  who  wrote 
under  the  respective  signatures  of  "Charles 
Sherry,"  "Mr.  Airy"  and  "Geoffery  -La 
Touche."  Young  Motley,  too,  was  an  occa 
sional  contributor  to  The  Collegian,  and  his 

*  From  notes  furnished  by  Dr.    Holmes. 


48  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

brother-in-law,  Park  Benjamin,  joined  Holmes 
and  Epes  Sargent,  in  1833,  in  writing  a  gift 
book  called  "The  Harbinger,"  the  profits  of 
which  were  given  to  Dr.  Howe's  Asylum  for 
tfie  blind. 


ABROAD.  49 


CHAPTER  V. 

ABROAD. 

AFTER  a  year's  study  of  law,  during  which 
time  the  Muses  were  constantly  tempting 
him  to  "pen  a  stanza  when  he  should  engross," 
young  Holmes  determined  to  take  up  the  study 
of  medicine,  which  was  much  more  congenial 
to  his  tastes  than  the  formulas  of  Coke  and 
Blackstone.  Doctor  James  Jackson  and  his 
associates  were  his  instructors  for  the  follow 
ing  two  years  and  a  half;  and  then  before  tak 
ing  his  degree  of  M.  D.,  he  spent  three  years 
in  Europe,  perfecting  his  studies  in  the  hospitals 
and  lecture-rooms  of  Paris  and  Edinburgh. 

Of  this  European  tour,  we  find  occasional 
allusions  scattered  throughout  his  writings. 
Listen,  for  instance,  to  this  grand  description 
of  Salisbury  Cathedral : 

"  It  was  the  first  cathedral  we  ever  saw, 
and  none  has  ever  so  impressed  us  since. 


50  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Vast,  simple,  awful  in  dimensions  and  height, 
just  beginning  to  grow  tall  at  the  point  where 
our  proudest  steeples  taper  out,  it  fills  the 
whole  soul,  pervades  the  vast  landscape  over 
which  it  reigns,  and,  like  Niagara  and  the  Alps, 
abolishes  that  five  or  six  foot  personality  in 
the  beholder  which  is  fostered  by  keeping 
company  with  the  little  life  of  the  day  in  its 
little  dwellings.  In  the  Alps  your  voice  is  as 
the  piping  of  a  cricket.  Under  the  sheet  of 
Niagara  the  beating  of  your  heart  seems  too 
trivial  a  movement  to  take  reckoning  of.  In 
the  buttressed  hollow  of  one  of  these  paleozoic 
cathedrals  you  are  ashamed  of  your  ribs,  and 
blush  for  the  exiguous  pillars  of  bone  on  which 
your  breathing  structure  reposes.  .  .  .  These 
old  cathedrals  are  beyond  all  comparison,  what 
are  best  worth  seeing  of  man's  handiwork 
in  Europe." 

"  Lively  emotions  very  commonly  do  not 
strike  us  full  in  front,  but  obliquely  from  the 
side,"  he  says  at  another  time.  "  A  scene  or 
incident  in  undress  often  affects  us  more  than 
one  in  full  costume. 

Is  this  the  mighty   ocean?  —  is  this  all? 


ABROAD.  51 

Says  the  Princess  in  Gebir.  The  rush  that 
should  have  flooded  my  soul  in  the  Coliseum 
did  not  come.  But  walking  one  day  in  the 
fields  about  the  city,  I  stumbled  over  a  frag 
ment  of  broken  masonry,  and  lo !  the  World's 
Mistress  in  her  stone  girdle  —  alta  mania 
Roma  —  rose  before  me,  and  whitened  my 
cheek  with  her  pale  shadow,  as  never  before  or 
ince. 

"  I  used  very  often,  when  coming  home 
from  my  morning's  work  at  one  of  the  public 
institutions  of  Paris,  to  stop  in  at  the  dear  old 
church  of  St.  Etienne  du  Mont.  The  tomb  of 
St.  Genevieve,  surrounded  by  burning  candles 
and  votive  tablets  was  there  ;  there  was  a 
noble  organ  with  carved  figures ;  the  pulpit 
was  borne  on  the  oaken  shoulders  of  a  stoop 
ing  Samson  ;  and  there  was  a  marvellous  stair 
case,  like  a  coil  of  lace.  These  things  I 
mention  from  memory,  but  not  all  of  them  to 
gether  impressed  me  so  much  as  an  inscription 
on  a  small  slab  of  marble  fixed  in  one  of  the 
walls.  It  told  how  this  Church  of  St.  Stephen 
was  repaired  and  beautified  in  the  16**,  and 
how  during  the  celebration  of  its  re-opening, 
two  girls  of  the  parish  (filles  de  la  faroisse). 


52  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

fell  from  the  gallery,  carrying  a  part  of  the 
balustrade  with  them,  to  the  pavement,  but  by 
miracle  escaped  uninjured.  Two  young  girls, 
nameless,  but  real  presences  to  my  imagina 
tion,  as  much  as  when  they  came  fluttering 
down  on  the  tiles  with  a  cry  that  outscreamed 
the  sharpest  treble  in  the  Te  Deum.  All  the 
crowd  gone  but  these  two  filles  de  la  paroisse  — 
gone  as  utterly  as  the  dresses  they  wore,  as 
the  shoes  that  were  on  their  feet,  as  the  bread 
and  meat  that  were  in  the  market  on  that 
day. 

",Not  the  great  historical  events,  but  the 
personal  incidents  that  call  up  single  sharp  pict 
ures  of  sonic  human  being  in  its  pang  of 
struggle,  reach,  us  most  nearly.  I  remember  the 
"pTaffofrn  at  Berne,  over  the  parapet  of  which 
Theobald  Weinzapfli's  restive  horse  sprang  with 
him  and  landed  him  more  than  a  hundred  feet 
beneath  in  the  lower  town,  not  dead,  but  sorely 
broken,  and  no  longer  a  wild  youth,  but  God's 
servant  from  that  day  forward.  I  have  forgotten 
the  famous  bears  and  all  else.  I  remember  the 
Percy  lion  on  the  bridge  over  the  little  river 
at  Alnwick — the  leaden  lion  with  his  tail  stretched 
out  straight  like  a  pump-handle  —  and  why  ? 


ABROAD.  53 

Because  of  the  story  of  the  village  boy  who 
must  fain  bestride  the  leaden  tail,  standing  out 
over  the  water — which  breaking,  he  dropped 
into  the  stream  far  below,  and  was  taken  out 
an  idiot  for  the  rest  of  his  life." 

Again  he  says :  "  I  once  ascended  the  spire 
of  Strasburg  Cathedral,  which  is  the  highest, 
I  think,  in  Europe.  It  is  a  shaft  of  stone 
filigree-work,  frightfully  open,  so  that  the  guide 
puts  his  arms  behind  you  to  keep  you  from 
falling.  To  climb  it  is  a  noonday  nightmare, 
and  to  think  of  having  climbed  it  crisps  all 
the  fifty-six  joints  of  one's  twenty  digits.  While 
I  was  on  it,  '  pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense 
inane,'  a  strong  wind  was  blowing,  and  I  felt 
sure  that  the  spire  was  rocking.  It  swayed 
back  and  forward  like  a  stalk  of  rye,  or  a 
cat-o'-nine  tails  (bulrush)  with  a  bobolink  on 
it.  I  mentioned  it  to  the  guide,  and  he  said 
that  the  spire  did  ically  swing  back  and  for 
ward,  I  think  he  said  some  feet. 

"  Keep  any  line  of  knowledge  ten  years  and 
some  other  line  will  intersect  it.  Long  after 
I  was  hunting  out  a  paper  of  Dumeril's  in  an 
old  journal — the  '  Magazin  Encyclopedquc  '  —  for 
ran  troishne  (1795),  when  I  stumbled  upon  a 


54  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

brief  article  on  the  vibrations  of  the  spire  of 
Strasburg  Cathedral.  A  man  can  shake  it  so  the 
movement  shall  be  shown  in  a  vessel  of  water 
nearly  seventy  feet  below  the  summit,  and 
higher  up  the  vibration  is  like  that  of  an 
earthquake.  I  have  seen  one  of  those  wretched 
wooden  spires  with  which  we  very  shabbily  fin 
ish  some  of  our  stone  churches  (thinking  that 
the  lidless  blue  eye  of  heaven  cannot  tell  the 
counterfeit  we  try  to  pass  on  it),  swinging  like 
a  reed  in  a  wind,  but  one  would  hardly  think 
of  such  a  thing  happening  in  a  stone  spire." 

Nor  does  he  forget  that  dear  little  child  he 
saw  and  heard  in  a  French  hospital.  "  Between 
two  and  three  years  old.  Fell  out  of  her  chair 
and  snapped  both  thigh-bones.  Lying  in  bed, 
patient,  gentle.  Rough  students  round  her, 
some  in  white  aprons,  looking  fearfully  business 
like  ;  but  the  child  placid,  perfectly  still.  I 
spoke  to  her,  and  the  blessed  little  creature 
answered  me  in  a  voice  of  such  heavenly  sweet 
ness,  with  that  reedy  thrill  in  it  which  you 
have  heard  in  the  thrush's  even-song,  that  I 
hear  it  at  this  moment.  '  C'est  tout  comme  un- 
serin,'  said  the  French  student  at  my  side." 

The  ruins  of  a  Roman  aqueduct  he  describes 


ABROAD.  55 

in  another  place,  and  now  and  then  some  inci 
dent  that  happened  in  England  or  Scotland, 
may  be  found  among  his  writings;  but  when, 
after  three  years'  absence,  he  returns  to  Cam 
bridge  and  delivers  his  poem  L  jfore  the  "  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society,"  he  begs  his  classmates  to  — 

Ask  no  garlands   sought  beyond  the   tide; 
But  take   the  leaflets  gathered   at  your  side. 

How  affectionately  his  thoughts  turned  home 
ward  is  strikingly  shown  in  the  very  first  lines 
of  the  poem : 

Scenes  of  my  youth !    awake   its   slumbering   fire ! 

Ye  winds  of  memory,   sweep    the   silent   lyre  I 

Ray   of   the  past,   if  yet   thou   canst   appear, 

Break  through  the   clouds    of   Fancy's   waning   year ; 

Chase  from  her  breast   the  thin  autumnal   snow, 

If  leaf   or  blossom   still   is  fresh   below ! 

Long   have    I   wandered ;    the    returning  tide 

Brought  back   an  exile   to   his  cradle's   side ; 

And  as  my  bark  her   time-worn   flag    unrolled 

To  greet   the   land-breeze  with  its  faded  fold, 

So,   in  remembrance   of  my  boyhood's   time, 

I   lift   these  ensigns    of  neglected   rhyme ; 

O  more  than  blest,  that   all   my  wanderings   through, 

My   anchor  falls  where  first  my  pennons   flew  ! 

And  read  yet  again  in  another  place  this  lov 
ing  tribute  to  the  home  of  his  childhood  : 


56  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"To  what  small  things  our  memory  and  our 
affections  attach  themselves  !  I  remember  when 
I  was  a  child  that  one  of  the  girls  planted 
some  Star  of  Bethlehem  bulbs  in  the  southwest 
corner  of  our  front  yard.  Well,  I  left  the  pater 
nal  roof  and  wandered  in  other  lands,  and 
learned  to  think  in  the  words  of  strange  peo 
ple.  But  after  many  years,  as  I  looked  in  the 
little  front  yard  again,  it  occurred  to  me  that 
there  used  to  be  some  Stars  of  Bethlehem  in  the 
southwest  corner.  The  grass  was  tall  there,  and 
the  blade  of  the  plant  is  very  much  like  grass, 
only  thicker  and  glossier. 

"  Even  as  Tully  parted  the  briers  and  brambles 
when  he  hunted  for  the  sphere-containing  cyl 
inder  that  marked  the  grave  of  Archimedes, 
so  did  I  comb  the  grass  with  my  fingers  for 
my  monumental  memorial  flower.  Nature  had 
stored  my  keepsake  tenderly  in  her  bosom.  The 
glossy,  faintly -streaked  blades  were  there ;  they 
are  there  still,  though  they  never  flower,  dark 
ened  as  they  are  by  the  shade  of  the  elms 
and  rooted  in  the  matted  turf. 

"  Our  hearts  are  held  down  to  our  homes  by 
innumerable  fibres,  trivial  as  that  I  have  just 
recalled;  but  Gulliver  was  fixed  to  the  soil, 


ABROAD.  57 

you  remember,  by  pinning  his  head  a  hair  at 
a  time.  Even  a  stone,  with  a  whitish  band 
crossing  it,  belonging  to  the  pavement  of  the 
back  yard,  insisted  on  becoming  one  of  the 
talismans  of  memory. 

"This  intersusception  of  the  ideas  of  inani 
mate  objects,  and  their  faithful  storing  away 
among  the  sentiments,  are  curiously  prefigured 
in  the  material  structure  of  the  thinking  centre 
itself.  In  the  very  core  of  the  brain,  in  the 
part  where  Des  Cartes  placed  the  soul,  is  a 
small  mineral  deposit  of  grape-like  masses  of 
crystalline  matter. 

"But  the  plants  that  come  up  every  year 
in  the  same  place,  like  the  Stars  of  Bethle 
hem,  of  all  the  lesser  objects,  give  me  the 
liveliest  home-feeling." 

To  return  to  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem, 
modestly  termed  by  the  author  "A  Metrical 
Essay,"  it  is  interesting  to  note  Lowell's  hearty 
appreciation  of  it  in  his  Fable  for  Critics: 

There's   Holmes,   who   is   matchless   among  you   for  wit, 
A   Leyden   jar   always   full-charged,   from   which  flit 
The   electrical   tingles   of     hit   after  hit. 
In   long  poems   'tis   painful   sometimes,   and   invites 
A   thought   of    the   way   the  new   telegraph  writes, 
Which   pricks   down   its    little   sharp   sentences   spitefully, 


58  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

As   if    you  got  more  than  you'd   title   to  rightfully. 

And  you  find   yourself  hoping   its   wild  father   Lightning 

Would  flame   in  for  a  second   and   give   you   a  fright'ning. 

He   has   perfect  sway   of    what   I   call   a  sham  metre, 

But  many  admire   it,   the    English  pentameter, 

And  Campbell,   I   think,  wrote   most  commonly  worse, 

With  less  nerve,    swing  and   fire,   in   the   same   kind   of    verse, 

Nor  e'er   achieved   aught   in   't   so   worthy   of    praise 

As   the   tribute    of    Holmes   to    the   grand   Marseillaise. 

You   went   crazy   last  year   over   Bulwer's   New  Simon; 

Why,   if    B.,   to  the   day  of    his   dying   should   rhyme   on, 

Heaping  verses  on   verses   and  tomes   upon  tomes, 

He   could   ne'er  reach   the   best,  point   and  vigor   of    Holmes  I 

are   just  the   fine   hands,   too,   to   weave   you   a   lyric 
rull    of    fancy,   fun,   feeling,   or   spiced   with  satyric 
In  a  measure  so  kindly,   you  doubt   if  the  toes 
That  are  trodden    upon,   are   your  own  or  your  foes. 

This  tribute  of  Holmes  to  the  grand  Marseil 
laise  is  indeed  one  of  the  finest  passages  in  a 
poem  abounding  in  point  and  vigor,  as  well  as  in 
fancy  and  feeling.  Who  can  read  these  stirring 
lines  without  a  sympathetic  thrill  for  the  watch 
ing,  weeping  Rouget  de  1'Isle,  composing  in  one 
night  both  music  and  words  of  the  nameless 
song  ? 

The   city  slept  beneath   the   moonbeam's   glance, 
Her  white  walls   gleaming  through  the   vines   of   France, 
And   all   was   hushed   save   where   the   footsteps   fell 
On  some   high  tower,   of   midnight   sentinel. 


ABROAD.  59 

But   one   still   watched ;    no  self-encircled  woes 

Chased  from  his   lids   the   angel  of   repose ; 

He   watched,   he   wept,   for   thoughts   of  bitter  years 

Bowed    his   dark   lashes,    wet    with   burning    tears ; 

His   country's   sufferings   and   her   children's   shame 

Streamed   o'er   his  memory  like   a  forest's   flame, 

Each   treasured  insult,  each  remembered  wrong, 

Rolled  through  his   heart   and  kindled  into   song; 

His  taper  faded;    and   the   morning  gales 

Swept  through  the   world   the   war  song   of  Marseilles ! 

In  this  same  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem  may  be 
found  that  beautiful  pastoral,  The  Cambridge 
Churchyard,  and 

Since  the  lyric  dress 
Relieves   the  statelier   with  its   sprightliness, 

the    stirring   verses   on    Old   Ironsides    are    here 
repeated>xSaid  one   who   heard    young    Holmes 

"^*~-      MB t\\~^^ 

deliver   this  poem   in    the  college  church  : 

"  Extremely  youthful  in  his  appearance,  bubbling 
over  with  the  mingled  humor  and  pathos  that 
have  always  marked  his  poetry,  and  sparkling 
with  the  coruscations  of  his  peculiar  genius,  he 
delivered  the  poem  with  a  clear,  ringing  enuncia 
tion  which  imparted  to  the  hearers  his  own  en 
joyment  of  his  thoughts  and  expressions." 


60  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

CHANGE    IN   THE    HOME. 

IN  1836,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  took  his 
degree  of  M.  D.  The  following  year  was 
made  sadly  memorable  to  the  happy  family  at 
the  parsonage  by  the  death  of  the  beloved 
father.  He  had  reached  his  threescore  years 
and  ten,  but  still  seemed  so  vigorous  in  mind  and 
body  that  neither  his  family  nor  the  parish  were 
prepared  for  the  sad  event.  Mary  and  Ann, 
the  two  eldest  daughters,  were  already  married  ; 
the  one  to  Usher  Parson,  M.  D.,  the  other  to 
Honorable  Charles  Wentworth  Upham.  Sarah, 
the  youngest,  had  died  in  early  childhood,  and 
only  Oliver  Wendell  and  his  brother  John 
remained  of  the  once  large  family  at  the 
parsonage.  Mrs.  Holmes  still  continued  to 
reside  with  her  two  sons  in  the  old  gambrel- 
roofed  house  which  her  father,  Judge  Oliver 
Wendell,  had  bought  for  her  at  the  time  of 
her  marriage. 


CHANGE  IN  THE  HOME.  61 

The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table  thus  describes 
the  delightful  old  dwelling  now  used  as  one 
of  the  College  buildings  : 

"  The  worst  of  a  modern  stylish  mansion  is, 
that  it  has  no  place  for  ghosts.  .  .  .  Now  the 
old  house  had  wainscots  behind  which  the  mice 
were  always  scampering,  and  squeaking,  and 
rattling  down  the  plaster,  and  enacting  family 
scenes  and  parlor  theatricals.  It  had  a  cellar 
where  the  cold  slug  clung  to  the  walls  and  the 
misanthropic  spider  withdrew  from  the  garish 
day  ;  where  the  green  mould  loved  to  grow, 
and  the  long,  white,  potato-shoots  went  feeling 
along  the  floor  if  happily  they  might  find  the 
daylight  ;  it  had  great  brick  pillars,  always  in  a 
cold  sweat  with  holding  up  the  burden  they 
had  been  aching  under  day  and  night  for  a  century 
and  more ;  it  had  sepulchral  arches  closed  by 
rough  doors  that  hung  on  hinges  rotten  with 
rust,  behind  which  doors,  if  there  was  not  a 
heap  of  bones  connected  with  a  mysterious 
disappearance  of  long  ago,  there  well  might 
have  been,  for  it  was  just  the  place  to  look  for 
them. 

"  Let  us  look  at  the  garret  as  I  can  repro 
duce  it  from  memory.  It  has  a  flooring  of 


62  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

lath,  with  ridges  of  mortar  squeezed  up  between 
them,  which  if  you  tread  on  you  will  go  to  — 
the  Lord  have  mercy  on  you !  where  will  you 
go  to? — the  same  being  crossed  by  narrow 
bridges  of  boards,  on  which  you  may  put  your 
feet,  but  with  fear  and  trembling. 

"  Above  you  and  around  you  are  beams  and 
joists,  on  some  of  which  you  may  see,  when 
the  light  is  let  in,  the  marks  of  the  conchoidal 
clippings  of  the  broadaxes,  showing  the  rude 
way  in  which  the  timber  was  shaped,  as  it  came, 
full  of  sap,  from  the  neighboring  forest.  It  is 
a  realm  of  darkness  and  thick  dust,  and  shroud- 
like  cobwebs  and  dead  things  they  wrap  in  their 
gray  folds.  For  a  garret  is  like  a  seashore, 
where  wrecks  are  thrown  up  and  slowly  go  to 
pieces.  There  is  the  cradle  which  the  old  man 
you  just  remember  was  rocked  in ;  there  is  the 
ruin  of  the  bedstead  he  died  on  ;  that  ugly 
slanting  contrivance  used  to  be  put  under  his 
pillow  in  the  days  when  his  breath  came  hard  ; 
there  is  his  old  chair  with  both  arms  gone, 
symbol  of  the  desolate  time  when  he  had  nothing 
earthly  left  to  lean  on  ;  there  is  the  large 
wooden  reel  which  the  blear-eyed  old  deacon 
sent  the  minister's  lady,  who  thanked  him  gra- 


CHANGE  IN  THE  HOME.  63 

ciously,  and  twirled  it  smilingly,  and  in  fitting 
season  bowed  it  out  decently  to  the  limbo  of 
troublesome  conveniences.  And  there  are  old 
leather  portmanteaus,  like  stranded  porpoises, 
their  mouths  gaping  in  gaunt  hunger  for  the 
food  with  which  they  used  to  be  gorged  to 
bulging  repletion  ;  and  the  empty  churn  with 
its  idle  dasher  which  the  Nancys  and  Phebes, 
who  have  left  their  comfortable  places  to  the 
Bridgets  and  Norahs,  used  to  handle  to  good 
purpose ;  and  the  brown,  shaky  old  spinning- 
wheel,  which  was  running,  it  may  be,  in  the 
days  when  they  were  hanging  the  Salem 
witches. 

"  Under  the  dark  and  haunted  garret  were 
attic  chambers  which  themselves  had  histories. 

The  rooms  of  the  second  story, 

the  chambers  of  birth  and  death,  are  sacred 
to  silent  memories. 

"  Let  us  go  down  to  the  ground  floor.  I 
retain  my  doubts  about  those  dents  on  the 
floor  of  the  right-hand  room,  the  study  of 
successive  occupants,  said  to  have  been  made 
by  the  butts  of  the  Continental  militia's  fire 
locks,  but  this  was  the  cause  the  story  told 
me  in  childhood,  laid  them  to.  That  military 


64  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

consultations  were  held  in  that  room  when  the 
house  was  General  Ward's  headquarters,  that 
the  Provincial  generals  and  colonels  and  other 
men  of  war  there  planned  the  movement  which 
ended  in  the  fortifying  of  Bunker's  Hill,  that 
Warren  slept  in  the  house  the  night  before  the 
battle,  that  President  Langdon  went  forth  from 
the  western  door  and  prayed  for  God's  bless 
ing  on  the  men  just  setting  forth  on  their 
bloody  expedition  —  all  these  things  have  been 
told,  and  perhaps  none  of  them  need  be 
doubted.  ,  ,  «-  .  ••  *. 

"  In  the  days  of  my  earliest  remembrance,  a 
row  of  tall  Lombardy  poplars  mounted  guard 
on  the  western  side  of  the  old  mansion. 
Whether  like  the  cypress,  these  trees  suggest 
the  idea  of  the  funeral  torch  or  the  monu 
mental  spire,  whether  their  tremulous  leaves 
make  us  afraid  by  sympathy  with  their  nervous 
thrills,  whether  the  faint  balsamic  smell  of  their 
leaves  and  their  closely  swathed  limbs  have  in 
them  vague  hints  of  dead  Pharaohs  stiffened 
in  their  cerements,  I  will  not  guess  ;  but  they 
always  seemed  to  me  to  give  an  air  of  sepul 
chral  sadness  to  the  house  before  which  they 
stood  sentries. 


CHANGE  IN  THE  HOME.  65 

"Not  so  with  the  row  of  elms  you  may  see 
leading  up  towards  the  western  entrance.  I 
think  the  patriarch  of  them  all  went  over  in 
the  great  gale  of  1815  ;  I  know  I  used  to 
shake  the  youngest  of  them  with  my  hands, 
stout  as  it  is  now,  with  a  trunk  that  would 
defy  the  bully  of  Crotona,  or  the  strong  man 
whose  liaison  with  the  Lady  Delilah  proved 
so  disastrous. 

"  The  College  plain  would  be  nothing  without 
its  elms.  As  the  long  hair  of  a  woman  is  a 
glory  to  her,  so  are  these  green  tresses  that 
bank  themselves  against  the  sky  in  thick  clus 
tered  masses,  the  ornament  and  the  pride  of 
the  classic  green.  .  ;>  ^  '.'.." 

"  There  is  a  row  of  elms  just  in  front  of  the 
old  house  on  the  south.  When  I  was  a  child 
the  one  at  the  southwest  corner  was  struck  by 
lightning,  and  one  of  its  limbs  and  a  long 
ribbon  of  bark  torn  away.  The  tree  never  fully 
recovered  its  symmetry  and  vigor,  and  forty 
years  and  more  afterwards  a  second  thunder 
bolt  crashed  upon  it  and  set  its  heart  on  fire, 
like  those  of  the  lost  souls  in  the  Hall  ot 
Eblis.  Heaven  had  twice  blasted  it,  and  the 
axe  finished  what  the  the  lightning  had  begun." 


66        ',  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"  Ah  me ! "  he  exclaims  at  another  time, 
"  what  strains  of  unwritten  verse  pulsate  through 
my  soul  when  I  open  a  certain  closet  in  the 
ancient  house  where  I  was  born !  On  its 
shelves  used  to  lie  bundles  of  sweet  marjoram 
and  pennyroyal  and  lavender  and  mint  and 
catnip;  there  apples  were  stored  until  their 
seeds  should  grow  black,  which  happy  period 
there  were  sharp  little  milk  teeth  always  ready 
to  anticipate ;  there  peaches  lay  in  the  dark, 
thinking  of  the  sunshine  they  had  lost,  until, 
like  the  hearts  of  saints  that  dream  of  heaven 
in  their  sorrow,  they  grew  fragrant  as  the 
breath  of  angels.  The  odorous  echo  of  a  score 
of  dead  summers  lingers  yet  in  those  dim 
recesses." 


TIIE  PROFESSOR.  07 


I 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE     PROFESSOR. 

N  1839,  Doctor  Holmes  was  appointed  Professor    / 

of  Anatomy  and  Physiology  in  Dartmouth  L\L 
College, i  and  pleasantly  describes  in  The  Pro-' 
fcssor,  his  "  Autumnal  sojourn  by  the  Connec 
ticut,  where  it  comes  loitering  down  from  its 
mountain  fastnesses  like  a  great  lord  swallowing 
up  the  small  proprietary  rivulets  very  quietly 
as  it  goes."  The  little  country  tavern  where 
he  stayed  while  delivering  his  lectures,  he  calls 
"that  caravansary  on  the  banks  of  the  stream 
where  Led)ard  launched  his  log  canoe,  and  the 
jovial  old  Colonel  used  to  lead  the  Commence 
ment  processions."  And  what  a  charming  descrip 
tion  this  of  the  little  town  of  Hanover,  "  where 
blue  Ascutney  looked  down  from  the  far  dis 
tance  and  the  '  hills  of  Beulah '  rolled  up  the 
opposite  horizon  in  soft,  climbing  masses,  so 
suggestive  of  the  Pilgrim's  Heavenward  Path 


68  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

that  he  (the  Professor)  used  to  look  through 
his  old  '  Dollond '  to  see  if  the  Shining  Ones 
were  not  within  range  of  sight  —  sweet  \  visions, 
sweetest  in  those  Sunday  walks  which  carried 
him  by  the  peaceful  common,  through  the  sol 
emn  village  lying  in  cataleptic  stillness  under 
the  shadow  of  the  rod  of  Moses,  to  the  terminus 
of  his  harmless  stroll,  the  spreading  beech-tree." 

I  In  1840,  Doctor  Holmes  was  married  to  Amelia 
Lee  Jackson,  a  daughter  of  Hon.  Charles  Jack 
son,  formerly  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Massachusetts.  The  first  home  of  the  young 
couple  was  at  No.  8,  Montgomery  Place,  the 
house  at  the  left-hand  side  of  the  court,  and 
next  the  farther  corner.  Here  Doctor  Holmes 
resided  for  about  eighteen  years,*  and  here  all 
his  children  were  born. 

"  When  he  entered  that  door,  two  shadows 
glided  over  the  threshold  ;  five  lingered  in  the 
doorway  when  he  passed  through  it  for  the 
last  time,  and  one  of  the  shadows  was  claimed 
by  its  owner  to  be  longer  than  his  own. 
What  changes  he  saw  in  that  quiet  place ! 
Death  rained  through  every  roof  but  his  ; 
children  came  into  life,  grew  to  maturity,  wedded, 

*From  notes  furnished   by  Dr.    Holmes. 


TILE  PROFESSOR.  69 

faded  away,  threw  themselves  away ;  the  whole 
drama  of  life  was  played  in  that  stock  company's 
theatre  of  a  dozen  houses,  one  of  which  was 
his,  and  no  deep  sorrow  or  severe  calamity  ever 
entered  his  dwelling  in  that  little  court  where 
he  lived  in  gay  loneliness  so  long." 

In  order  to  devote  himself  more  strictly  to 
his  practice  in  Boston,  Doctor  Holmes  resigned 
his  professorship  at  Dartmouth  College  soon 
after  his  marriage.  During  the  summer  months, 
however,  he  delivered  lectures  before  the  Berk 
shire  Medical  School  at  Piftsfield,  Mass.,  and 
established  his  summer  residence  "up  among 
those  hills  that  shut  in  the  amber-flowing  Hous- 
atonic,  in  the  home  overlooking  the  winding 
stream  and  the  smooth,  flat  meadow ;  looked 
down  upon  by  wild  hills  where  the  tracks  of 
bears  and  catamounts  may  yet  sometimes  be 
seen  upon  the  winter  snow  —  a  home,"  he  adds, 
"  where  seven  blessed  summers  were  passed 
which  stand  in  memory  like  the  seven  golden 
candlesticks  in  the  beatific  vision  of  the  holy 
dreamer." 

The  township  of  Pontoosuc,  now  Pittsfield,  in 
cluding  some  twenty-four  thousand  acres,  was 
bought  by  Doctor  Holmes'  great-grandfather,  Jacob 


70  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Wendell,  about  the  year  1734.  It  was  on  a 
small  part  of  this  large  possession  that  "  Canoe 
Place,"  the  pleasant  summer  home  of  Doctor 
Holmes,  was  built. 

Hawthorne  was  then  living  at  Lenox,  which 
is  only  a  few  miles  from  Pittsfield,  and  in  his 
contribution  to  Lowell's  magazine,  The  Pioneer, 
in  1843,  he  describes  in  his  Hall  of  Fantasy,  the 
poets  he  saw  "  talking  in  groups,  with  a  liveli 
ness  of  expression,  or  ready  smile,  and  a  light, 
intellectual  laughter  which  showed  how  rapidly 
the  shafts  of  wit  were  glancing  to  and  fro  among 
them.  In  the  most  vivacious  of  these,"  he  adds, 
"  I  recognized  Holmes." 

Beside  Hawthorne,  there  was  Herman  Mel 
ville,  Miss  Sedgwick  and  Fanny  Kemble  near  by 
on  those  "  maple-shadowed  plains  of  Berkshire," 
while  Bryant  and  Ellery  Channing  not  unfre- 
quently  joined  the  brilliant  circle  in  their  sum 
mer  trips  to  the  Stockbridge  hills. 

In  the  Boston  home  of  Doctor  Holmes,  John 
Lothrop  Motley  was  a  welcome  visitor  —  a  man 
whose  "generous  sympathies  with  popular  liberty 
no  homage  paid  to  his  genius  by  the  class  whose 
admiring  welcome  is  most  seductive  to  scholars 
could  ever  spoil."  JBoth  young  men  were  mem- 


THE  PBOFESSOR.  71 

bers  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society, 
and  after  the  death  of  Motley,  Holmes  became 
his  biographer. 

Charles  Sumner  formed  another  of  this  pleas 
ant  literary  coterie,  and  is  described  by  Doctor 
Holmes,  after  a  short  acquaintance,  as  "an  ami 
able,  blameless  young  man  ;  pleasant,  affable  and 
cheerful."  Years  after,  when  Sumner  was  as 
saulted  in  the  Senate,  Doctor  Holmes,  at  a  pub 
lic  dinner  in  Boston,  denounced  in  strong  language, 
the  shameful  outrage  as  an  assault  not  only  upon 
the  man,  but  upon  the  Union. 

At  the  Berkshire  festivals,  the  poet  was  often 
called  upon  to  furnish  a  song,  and  brimful  of 
wit  and  wisdom  they  always  were,  though  often 
composed  upon  the  spur  of  the  moment.  Here 
is  a  part  of  one  of  them  : 

Come  back  to  your  mother,   ye   children,   for  shame, 
Who   have   wandered   like   truants,   for  riches   or   fame ! 
With   a  smile   on   her  face,   and   a  sprig   in   her   cap, 
She   calls  you   to  feast  from   her   bountiful   lap. 

Come   out  from  your  alleys,   your  courts,  and  your  lanes. 
And  breathe,   like  young   eagles,   the   air   of  our  plains, 
Take   a   whiff  from  our  fields,   and   your   excellent  wives 
Will  declare  it's  all   nonsense   insuring  your   lives. 


72  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Come  you   of  the  law,   who   can   talk,  if  you  please, 
Till  the  Man  in  the  Moon  will  declare  it's   a  cheeses 
And   leave   '  the   old   lady   that   never  tell   lies,' 
To   sleep   with  her  handkerchief   over   her  eyes. 

Ye   healers  of  men,   for  a  moment  decline 

Your  feats   in  the   rhubarb   and  ipecac  line  ; 

While   you  shut   up  your  turnpike,  your  neighbors  can  go 

The  old   roundabout  road,  to   the   regions   below. 

You  clerk,   on   whose  ears   are  a  couple   of  pens, 
And   whose   head   is   an   anthill   of   units    and  tens, 
Though  Plato   denies  you,   we  welcome  you   still 
As   a  featherless   biped,   in  spite  of  your   qu,ill. 

Poor   drudge   of  the   city!    how   happy  he   feels 

With   the  burrs  on   his   legs   and   the  grass   at  his   heels  I 

No   dodger   behind,    his   bandannas  to  share, 

No   constable   grumbling   "You   mustn't  walk  there  I  " 

In  yonder  green   meadow,   to   memory   dear, 

He  slaps   a  mosquito   and  brushes   a  tear; 

The   dewdrops   hang   round   him   on   blossoms  and  shoots, 

He  breathes   but   one   sigh  for   his   youth   and   his  boots. 

There  stands   the  old   schoolhouse,  hard  by  the  old  church 
That  tree   at   its   side   had  the   flavor   of  birch; 
O   sweet   were   the   days    of   his   juvenile   tricks, 
Though   the   prairie   of  youth   had   so   many  "big   licks." 

By  the  side  of  yon  river   he   weeps   and   he   slumps, 
The  boots   fill  with   water  as   if  they   were  pumps; 
Till,  sated  with   rapture,   he   steals   to   his  bed, 
With   a  glow   in  his   heart,   and   a   cold   in   his   head. 


THE    PROFESSOR.  73 

At  the  annual  dinner  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Society,  in  1843,  Doctor  Holmes  read  the  fine 
poem  entitled  Terpsichore. 

Three  years  later  he  delivered  Urania,  A 
Rhyme  Lesson  before  the  Boston  Mercantile 
Library  Association.  "To  save  a  question  that 
is  sometimes  put,"  remarks  the  poet,  "  it  is 
proper  to  say  that  in  naming  these  two  poems 
after  two  of  the  Muses,  nothing  more  was  in 
tended  than  a  suggestion  of  their  general  char 
acter  and  aim." 


74  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    LECTURER. 

WHEN  Doctor  Warren  gave  up  the  Park- 
man  professorship  at  Harvard,  in  1847, 
Doctor  Holmes  was  appointed  to  take  his  place 
as  Professor  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology. 
eight  months  of  the  year,  four  lectures  are 
delivered  each  week  in  this  department  of  the 
college,  and  yet  Doctor  Holmes  still  found  time 
"between  whiles,"  to  attend  to  his  Boston  prac 
tice,  and  to  write  many  charming  poems  and 
essays.  He  also  entered  the  lyceum  arena,  "an 
original  American  contrivance,"  as  Theodore 
Parker  describes  it  in  1857,  "for  educating  the 
people.  The  world  has  nothing  like  it.  In  it 
are  combined  the  best  things  of  the  Church: 
i.  e.,  the  preaching ;  and  of  the  College : 
i.  e.,  the  informing  thought,  with  some  of  the 
fun  of  the  theatre.  Besides,  it  gives  the  rural 
districts  a  chance  to  see  the  men  they  read 
about  —  to  see  the  lions  —  for  the  lecturer  is 


THE  LECTUREE.  75 

also  a  show  to  the  eyes.  For  ten  years  past 
six  or  eight  of  the  most  progressive  minds  in 
America  have  been  lecturing  fifty  or  a  hundred 
times  a  year." 

Among  the  many  subjects  that  Doctor  Holmes 
touched  upon  in  these  lyceum  lectures  was  a 
fine,  witty,  and  remarkably  just  criticism  on 
the  English  Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 
What  a  pity  that  Oscar  Wilde  and  his  brother 
poets  of  this  later  day  could  not  have  the  ben 
efit  of  just  such  a  clear,  microscopic  analysis ! 
What  the  Autocrat  himself  thought  of  these 
lecturing  tours  through  the  country  we  have  in 
his  own  words  : 

"  I  have  played  the  part  of  '  Poor  Gentleman ' 
before  many  audiences,"  he  says  ;  "  more,  I  trust, 
than  I  shall  ever  face  again.  I  did  not  wear 
a  stage  costume,  nor  a  wig,  nor  mustaches  of 
burnt  cork  ;  but  I  was  placarded  and  announced 
as  a  public  performer,  and  at  the  proper  hour 
I  came  forward  with  the  ballet-dancer's  smile 
upon  my  countenance,  and  made  my  bow  and 
acted  my  part.  I  have  seen  my  name  stuck  up 
in  letters  so  big  that  I  was  ashamed  to  show 
myself  in  the  place  by  daylight.  I  have  gone 
to  a  town  with  a  sober  literary  essay  in  my 


76  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

pocket,  and  seen  myself  everywhere  announced 
as  the  most  desperate  of  buffos.  I  have  been 
through  as  many  hardships  as  Ulysses  in  the 
exercise  of  my  histrionic  vocation.  I  have 
sometimes  felt  as  if  I  were  a  wandering  spirit, 
and  this  great,  unchanging  multivertebrate  which 
I  faced  night  after  night  was  one  ever-listening 
animal,  which  writhed  along  after  me  wherever 
I  fled,  and  coiled  at  my  feet  every  evening 
turning  up  to  me  the  same  sleepless  eyes  which 
I  thought  I  had  closed  with  my  last  drowsy 
incantation." 

Of  his  audiences  he  writes  again  as  follows  : 
"  Two  lyceum  assemblies,  of  five  hundred  each, 
are  so  nearly  alike,  that  they  are  absolutely 
undistinguishable  in  many  cases  by  any  definite 
mark,  and  there  is  nothing  but  the  place  and 
time  by  which  one  can  tell  the  '  remarkably 
intelligent  audience '  of  a  town  in  New  York 
or  Ohio  from  one  in  any  New  England  town 
of  similar  size.  Of  course,  if  any  principle  of 
selection  has  come  in,  as  in  those  special  asso 
ciations  of  young  men  which  are  common  in 
cities,  it  deranges  the  uniformity  of  the  assem 
blage.  But  let  there  be  no  such  interfering 
circumstances,  and  one  knows  pretty  well  even 


THE  LECTURER.  77 

the  look  the  audience  will  have,  before  he  goes 
in.  Front  seats,  a  few-old  folks  —  shiny-headed — • 
slant  up  best  ear  toward  the  speaker  —  drop 
off  asleep  after  a  while,  when  the  air  begins 
to  get  a  little  narcotic  with  carbonic  acid. 
Bright  women's  faces,  young  and  middle-aged, 
a  little  behind  these,  but  toward  the  front  — 
( pick  out  the  best,  and  lecture  mainly  to  that ). 
Here  and  there  a  countenance,  sharp  and 
scholarlike,  and  a  dozen  pretty  female  ones 
sprinkled  about.  An  indefinite  number  of  pairs 
of  young  people  —  happy,  but  not  always  very 
attentive.  Boys  in  the  background  more  or  less 
quiet.  Dull  faces  here,  there  —  in  how  many 
places  !  I  don't  say  dull  people,  but  faces  with 
out  a  ray  of  sympathy  or  a  movement  of 
expression.  They  are  what  kill  the  lecturer. 
These  negative  faces  with  their  vacuous  eyes 
and  stony  lineaments  pump  and  suck  the  warm 
soul  out  of  him  ;  —  that  is  the  chief  reason  why 
lecturers  grow  so  pale  before  the  season  is  over. 
"  Out  of  all  these  inevitable  elements  the 
audience  is  generated — a  great  compound  ver 
tebrate,  as  much  like  fifty  others  you  have  seen 
as  any  two  mammals  of  the  same  species  are 
like  each  other." 


78  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"Pretty  nigh  killed  himself,"  says  the  good 
landlady,  "  goin'  about  lecterin'  two  or  three 
winters,  talking  in  cold  country  lyceums  —  as  he 
used  to  say  —  goin'  home  to  cold  parlors  and 
bein'  treated  to  cold  apples  and  cold  water,  and 
then  goin'  up  into  a  cold  bed  in  a  cold 
chamber,  and  comin'  home  next  mornin'  with 
a  cold  in  his  head  as  bad  as  the  horse  dis 
temper.  Then  he'd  look  kind  of  sorry  for  havin' 
said  it,  and  tell  how  kind  some  of  the  good 
women  was  to  him ;  how  one  spread  an  eider 
down  comforter  for  him,  and  another  fixed  up 
somethin'  hot  for  him  after  the  lectur,  and 
another  one  said,  '  There  now,  you  smoke  that 
cigar  of  yours  after  the  lectur,  jest  as  if  you 
was  at  home,'  and  if  they'd  all  been  like  that, 
he'd  have  gone  on  lecturing  forever,  but,  as  it 
was,  he  had  got  pooty  nigh  enough  of  it,  and 
preferred  a  nateral  death  to  puttin'  himself  out 
of  the  world  by  such  violent  means  as  lec- 
turin'." 

To  these  graphic  pictures  of  the  "lyceum 
lecturer "  we  would  add  one  more  which  was 
given  by  Mr.  J.  W.  Harper,  at  the  Holmes 
Breakfast. 

"  I   well   remember,"  he   said,   "  the  first  time 


THE  LECTURER.  79 

I  saw  Doctor  Holmes.  It  was  long  ago;  not 
as  our  Autocrat  expresses  it,  *  in  the  year 
eighteen  hundred  and  ever  so  few ; '  nor,  as 
Thackeray  has  it,  '  when  the  present  century 
was  in  its  teens.'  It  was  just  after  the  close 
of  the  last  half  century,  and  on  a  cold  winter's 
afternoon,  when  the  sun  was  fast  setting  behind 
the  then  ungilded  dome  of  the  State  House, 
and  it  was  in  old  Bromfield  street.  It  was  not 
in  the  Bromfield  Street  Methodist  Church,  nor 
in  the  contiguous  Methodist  inn,  known  as  the 
Bromfield  House,  which,  for  many  years,  might 
have  been  the  convenient  resort  of  good  Meth 
odist  elders,  and  of  the  peripatetic  presiding 
elders,  who  were  called  by  the  genial  Bishop 
Wainwright,  the  '  bob-tailed  bishops '  of  their 
flocks  and  districts.  ...  I  was  in  the  large 
stable  adjoining  the  Bromfield  House,  endeavor 
ing  to  secure  a  sleigh,  when  there  entered  a 
gentleman  apparently  of  my  own  age.  He  came 
in  quickly,  and  with  impatience  demanded  the 
immediate  production  of  a  team  and  sleigh, 
which,  though  ordered  for  him,  had  somehow 
been  forgotten.  The  new-comer,  it  was  evident, 
was  not  to  be  trifled  with.  There  was  no  non 
sense  about  him,  and  I  was  not  surprised, 


80  OLIVER  WENDELL  UOLMES. 

when,  a  few  years  later,  I  learned  that  he  had 
become  an  Autocrat. 

"  On  that  particular  night  he  had  a  long  drive 
before  him,  for  he  was  to  lecture  at  Newbury- 
port,  or  Nantasket,  or  Nantucket,  or  some  other 
then  unannexed  suburb  of  Boston.  I  doubt  if 
the  horse  survived  the  drive,  and  I  am  quite 
sure  he  is  not  now  living.  But  the  driver  lives, 
and  the  young  New  Yorker  who  then  admired 
him,  and  would  fain  have  driven  with  him  on 
that  cold  winter  night,  has  since,  in  common 
with  thousands  of  other  New  Yorkers,  been  filled 
with  grateful  admiration  for  what  that  driver  has 
done  for  literature,  and  for  the  happiness  and 
improvement  of  the  world." 

In  1838  Doctor  Holmes  wrote  the  Boylston 
Prise  Dissertation,  and  in  1842,  Homoeopathy  and 
its  kindred  Delusions.  The  Boylston  prizes 
were  established  in  1803,  by  Ward  Nicholas 
Boylston.  Doctor  Holmes  gained  three  of  these 
prizes,  and  the  Dissertations,  one  of  which  was 
upon  Intermittent  Fever,  were  published  to 
gether  in  book  form  in  1838. 

When,  in  February  of  the  same  year  (1842), 
the  young  men  of  Boston  gave  a  dinner  to 
Charles  Dickens,  Doctor  Holmes  welcomed  the 


THE  LECTURER.  81 

distinguished   visitOF   in    the    following    beautiful 
song: 

The   stars   their  early  vigils  keep, 

The   silent   hours   are   near, 
When   drooping  eyes   forget  to  weep  — 

Yet   still   We   linger   here ; 
And   what  —  the   passing  churl   may   ask  — 

Can  claim   such   wondrous   power, 
That  Toil   forgets   his   wonted   task, 

And   Love   his   promised  hour  ? 

The   Irish  harp   no   longer  thrills, 

Or  breathes   a  fainter   tone ; 
The  clarion   blast  from   Scotland's   hills 

Alas  1    no  more   is   blown. 
And   Passion's   burning   lip   bewails 

Her   Harold's   wasted   fire, 
Still   lingering   o'er  the   dust   that  veils 

The  Lord   of   England's    lyre. 

But  grieve   not   o'er   its  broken  strings, 

Nor  think  its   soul   hath    died, 
While   yet  the   lark   at   heaven's  gate   sings, 

As   once   o'er   Avon's  side ;  — 
While   gentle   summer   sheds   her   bloom, 

And   dewy  blossoms   wave, 
Alike   o'er   Juliet's   storied  tomb 

And   Nelly's   nameless  grave. 

Thoi    glorious   island   of  the  sea  I 
Thougn    w'de   the   wasting   flood 
That  parts  ^u*   distant  land  from  thee, 


82  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

We  claim  thy  generous .  blood. 
Nor  o'er  thy  far  horizon   springs 

One  hallowed  star  of  fame, 
But   kindles,   like  an   angel's   wings, 

Our  western  skies   in  flame  I 


NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE.  83 


CHAPTER    IX. 

NAMING    THE    NEW     MAGAZINE. 

IN  the  year  1857,  Mr.  Phillips,  of  the  firm  of 
Phillips  &  Sampson,  undertook  the  publica 
tion  in  Boston,  of  a  new  literary  magazine. 
They  were  fortunate  in  securing  James  Russell 
Lowell  as  editor,  and  one  condition  he  made 
upon  accepting  the  office  was,  that  his  friend, 
Doctor  Holmes,  should  be  one  of  the  chief 
contributors. 

It  was  the  latter,  also,  who  was  called  upon 
to  name  the  new  magazine.  Thus  was  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  launched  upon  the  great  sea 
of  literature — a  periodical  that  has  never  lost 
its  first  high  prestige. 

When  Dpctor  Holmes  sat  down  to  write  his 
first  article  for  the  new  magazine,  he  remem 
bered  that  some  twenty-five  years  before,  he 
had  begun  a  series  of  papers  for  a  certain  New 
England  Magazine,  published  in  Boston,  by  J. 
T.  &  E.  Buckingham,  with  the  title  of  Autocrat 


84  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

of  the  Breakfast-Table.  Curious,  as  he  says,  to 
try  the  experiment  of  shaking  the  same  bough 
again  and  finding  out  if  the  ripe  fruit  were 
better  or  worse  than  the  early  wind-falls,  he 
took  the  same  title  for  his  new  articles. 

"  The  man  is  father  to  the  boy  that  was,"  he 
adds,  "  and  I  am  my  own  son,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  in  those  papers  of  the  New  England  Mag 
azine" 

To  show  the  reader  some  family  traits  of  this 
"  young  autocrat,"  we  quote  from  these  earlier 
articles  the  following  fine  extracts  : 

"  When  I  feel  inclined  to  read  poetry,  I  take 
down  my  dictionary.  The  poetry  of  words  is 
quite  as  beautiful  as  that  of  sentences.  The 
author  may  arrange  the  gems  effectively,  but 
their  shape  and  lustre  have  been  given  by  the 
attrition  of  ages.  Bring  me  the  finest  simile 
from  the  whole  range  of  imaginative  writing,  and 
I  will  show  you  a  single  word  which  conveys 
a  more  profound,  a  more  accurate,  and  a  more 
eloquent  analogy. 

"  Once  on  a  time,  a  notion  was  started  that 
if  all  the  people  in  the  world  would  shout  at 
once,  it  might  be  heard  in  the  moon.  So  the 
projectors  agreed  it  should  be  done  in  just  ten 


NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE.  85 

years.  Some  thousand  shiploads  of  chronometers 
were  distributed  to  the  selectmen  and  other 
great  folks  of  all  the  different  nations.  For  a 
year  beforehand,  nothing  else  was  talked  about 
but  the  awful  noise  that  was  to  be  made  on 
the  great  occasion.  When  the  time  came  every 
body  had  their  ears  so  wide  open  to  hear  the 
universal  ejaculation  of  boo — the  word  agreed 
upon  —  that  nobody  spoke  except  a  deaf  man 
in  one  of  the  Fejee  Islands,  and  a  woman  in 
Pekin,  so  that  the  world  was  never  so  still 
since  the  creation." 

At  the  close  of  the  year  when  the  twelve 
numbers  of  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast -Table 
were  completed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and 
published  in  book  form,  the  British  Review 
wrote  of  the  illustrious  author  as  follows  : 

"  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  has  been  long 
known  in  this  country  as  the  author  of  some 
poems  written  in  stately  classic  verse,  abounding 
in  happy  thoughts  and  bright  bird-peeps  of 
fancy,  such  as  this,  for  example : 

The   punch-bowl's   sounding  depths  were   stirred, 
Its  silver   cherubs  smiling   as   they   heard. 

And    this   first   glint   of   spring  — 


66  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

The  spendthrift   Crocus,   bursting  through   the   mould, 
Naked   and  shivering   with   his   cup   of  gold. 

He  is  also  known  as  the  writer  of  many  pieces 
which  wear  a  serious  look  until  they  break  out 
into  a  laugh  at  the  end,  perhaps  in  the  last- 
line,  as  with  those  on  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl, 
a  cunning  way  of  the  writer's  ;  just  as  the  knot 
is  tied  in  the  whip  cord  at  the  end  of  the 
lash  to  enhance  the  smack. 

/  "  But  neither  of  these  kinds  of  verse  prepared 
us  for  anything  so  good,  so  sustained,  so 
national,  and  yet  so  akin  to  our  finest  humor 
ists,  as  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table  ; 
a  very  delightful  book  —  a  handy  book  for  the 
breakfast  table.  A  book  to  conjure 


winter  picture  of  a  ruddy  fire  and  singing 
kettle,  soft  hearth-rug,  warm  slippers,  and  easy 
\chair;  a^rnusical  chime  of  cups  and  saucers, 
fragrance  of  tea  and  toast  within,  and  those 
.  flowers  of  frost  fading  on  the  windows  without 
as  though  old  Winter  just  looked  in,  but  his 
cold  breath  was  melted,  and  so  he  passed  by. 
A  book  to  possess  two  copies  of  ;  one  to  be 
read  and  marked,  thumbed  and  dog-eared  ;  and 
one  to  stand  up  in  its  pride  of  place  with  the 
rest  on  the  shelves,  all  ranged  in  shining  rows, 


NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE.  87 

as   dear   old   friends,  and  not  merely   as  nodding 
acquaintances. 

— ""Not  at  all  like  that  ponderous  and  over 
bearing  autocrat,  Doctor  Johnson,  is  our  Yankee 
friend,  jie  has  more  of  Gojdsmith's__sw.ej£t£i£ss 
andloyahi)jty  _._He  is^_a^Jrue__alover  of  ele 
gance  and  high  bred  grace,  dainty  fancies,  and 
all  pleasurable  things,  as  was  Leigh  Hunt ;  he 
KIS  more  wonJly  sense  without  the  moral  lan 
guor  ;  but  there  is  the  same  boy-heart  beating 
in  a  manly  breast,  beneath  the  poet's  singing 
£obe.  For  he  is  a  poet  as  well  as  a  humorist. 
Indeed,  although  this  book  is  written  in  prose, 
it  is  full  of  poetry,  with  the  'beaded  bubbles' 
of  humor  dancing  up  through  the  true  hippo- 
crene  and  '  winking  at  the  brim '  with  a  win 
ning  look  of  invitation  shining  in  their  merry 
eyes. 

"  The  humor  andthe__rjoetry  of  the  book  do 
not  lie  in  tangible  nuggets  for  extraction,  but 
they  are  there  ;  they  pervade  it  from  beginning 
to  end.  We  cannot  spoon  out  the  sparkles  of 
sunshine  as  they  shimmer  on  the  wavelets  of 
water  ;  but  they  are  there,  moving  in  all  their 
golden  life  and  evanescent  grace. 

"  Holmes  may  not  be  so  recognizably  national 


£8  OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 

as  Lowell ;   his  prominent  characteristics  are  not 

so   exceptionally  Yankee;    the   traits    are   not  so 

peculiar  as  those  delineated  in  the  Biglow  Papers, 

But  he   is   national.     One    of  the    most    hopeful 

literary   signs    of  this    Book    is   its    quiet    nation- 

L  ality.     The    writer   has    made    no    straming     and 

'gasping  efforts   after    that    which    is   striking    and 

peculiar,    which    has   always    been    the    bane    of 

youth,    whether   in   nations   or    individuals.      He 

^^ 

/has   been    content   to   take    the    common,    home- 
|  spun,    everyday   humanity   that    he   found    ready 
/  to   hand  —  people  who  do  congregate  around  the 
breakfast   table   of  an  American  boarding-house  ; 
and  out   of  this   material    he   has    wrought    with 
a   vivid    touch  and  truth  of  portraiture,  and  won 
the     most     legitimate      triumph     of     a     genuine 

book 

_/ 

"  Holmes  has  the  pleasantest  possible  way  of 
saying  things  that  many  people  don't  like  to 
%  hear.  His  tonics  are  bitter  and  bland.  He 
does  not  spare  the  various  foibles  and  vices  of 
his  countrymen  and  women.  But  it  is  done  so 
good-naturedly,  or  with  a  sly  puff  of  diamond 
dust  in  the  eyes  of  the  victims,  who  don't  see 
the  joke  which  is  so  apparent  to  us.  As  good 
old  Isaak  Walton  advises  respecting  the  worm, 


NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE.  89 

he    impales   them   tenderly   as   though    he    loved 
them." 

£Io\v  vividly  every  personage  around  that 
delightful ""Breakfast-Table "  is  photographed 
upon  the  reader's  mind  !  Can  you  not  see  the 
dear  "  Old  Gentleman  "  just  opposite  the  "  Auto 
crat,"  as  he  suddenly  surprises  the  company  by 
repeating  a  beautiful  hymn  he  learned  in  child 
hood  ?  And  the  pale  sweet  "Schoolmistress" 
in  her  modest  mourning  dress  ?  no  wonder  the 
eyes  of  the  Autocrat  frequently  wandered  to 
that  part  of  the  table  and  certain  remarks  are 
addressed  to  her  alone !  To  tell  the  truth,  we 
can't  help  falling  in  love  with  her  ourselves ! 
What  a  fine  foil  to  this  "  soft-voiced  little 
woman,"  is  the  landlady's  daughter  —  that  "  ten 
der-eyed  blonde,  with  her  long  ringlets,  cameo 
pin,  gold  pencil-case  on  a  chain,  locket,  bracelet, 
album,  autograph  book,  and  accordion  —  who 
says  '  Yes  ? '  when  you  tell  her  anything,  and 
reads  Byron,  Tupper,  and  Sylvanus  Cobb  Junior, 
while  her  mother  makes  the  puddings ! "  Then 
there  is  the  "  poor  relation "  from  the 
country  —  "a  somewhat  more  than  middle-aged 
female,  with  parchment  forehead  and  a  dry  little 


90  OLIVEE  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

frizette  shingling  itf  a  sallow  neck  with  a  neck 
lace  of  gold  beads,  and  a  black  dress  too  rusty 
for  recent  grief."  Can  you  not  hear  the  very 
tones  of  her  high-pitched  voice  as  she  remarks 
that  "  Buckwheat  is  skerce  and  high." 

"The  "Professor"  under  chloroform — "the 
young  man  whom  they  call  John,"  appropri 
ating  the  three  peaches  in  illustration  of  the 
Autocrat's  metaphysics  —  the  boy,  Benjamin 
Franklin,  poring  over  his  French  exercises  — 
the  Poet,  who  had  to  leave  town  when  the 
anniversaries  came  round  —  and  the  divinity 
student  whose  head  the  Autocrat  tries  occa 
sionally,  "  as  housewives  try  eggs,"  all  these_ 
are  so  real  to  the  reader  that  he  can  but  feel 
they  were  something  more  than  imaginary  char 
acters  to  the  writer. 

Among  the  poems  that  close  each  number 
of  the  Autocrat,  are  some  of  the  finest  in  our 
language.  The  Chambered  Nautilus,  The  Living 
Temple,  The  Voiceless,  and  The  Two  Armies,  are 
full  of  inspiring  thought  and  deep  pathos,  while 
The  Deacon  s  Masterpiece,  Parson  TurelFs  Legacy, 
The  Old  Mans  Dream,  and  Contentment,  sparkle_ 
with  the  Autocrat's  own  peculiar  humor. 

^.^  "•  •'  i  i  '••••* '••**'^^atj^T[  ,(-•  ~-^f 

"  When    we    think    of  the   familiar   confidences 
of  the   Autocrat,"    says    Underwood,  "we   might 


NAMING  THE  NEW  MAGAZINE.  91 

liken  him  to  Montaigne.  But  when  the  parallel 
is  being  considered,  we  come  upon  passages  so 
full  of  tingling  hits  or  of  rollicking  fun,  that  we 
are  sure  we  are  mistaken,  and  that  he  resembles 
no  one  so  much  as  Sidney  Smith.  But  pres 
ently  he  sounds  the  depths  of  our  consciousness, 
explores  the  concealed  channels  of  feeling, 
flashes  the  light  of  genius  upon  our  half- 
acknowledged  thoughts,  and  we  see  that  this 
is  what  neither  the  great  Gascon  nor  the  hearty 
and  jovial  Englishman  could  have  attempted, 
.  .  .  .  when  the  world  forgets  the  sallies 
that  have  set  tables  in  a  roar,  and  even  the 
lyrics  that  have  set  a  nation's  heart  on  fire, 
Holmes'  picture  of  the  ship  of  pearl  will 
preserve  his  name  forever." 


92  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  X. 

ELSIE    VE_NNER. 

THE  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table  was 
followed  in  1859  by  The  Professor,  a 
series  of  similar  essays,  in  which  we  are  intro 
duced  to  "  Iris "  and  "  Little  Boston,"  and 
begin  to  realize  Doctor  Holmes'  inimitable 
skill  in  dramatic  effect  as  well  as  in  character 
painting.  The  Story  of  Iris  has  been  printed 
by  itself  in  Rossiter  Johnson's  Little  Classics, 
and  reads  like  an  exquisite  prose  poem ;  but 
after  all,  we  like  best  to  follow  the  delicate 
thread  of  narrative  just  as  the  professor  him 
self  has  introduced  it  —  a  dainty  aria  whose 
harmony  runs  under  and  over  and  all  through 
the  deep  philosophy  and  sparkling  table  talk 
of  the  book. 

It  prepares  us,  too,  for  Elsie  Vernier,  the 
"Professor's  Story"  —  a  novel  whose  weird 
conception  holds  us  spell-bound  from  beginning 


ELSIE  VENNER.  93 

to  end,  in  spite  of  the  sadness  —  "the  pity  of 
it."  At  the~~very — first"  introduction  to  Elsie 
we  have  a  hint  of  the  strange  hereditary 
curse  that  throws  its  blight  over  her  whole 
nature : 

"  Who  and  what  is  that,"  asks  the  new 
master,  "sitting  a  little  apart  there  —  that 
strange,  wild-looking  girl  ?  " 

The  lady  teacher's  face  changed  ;  one  would 
have  said  she  was  frightened  or  troubled.  She 
looked  at  the  girl  doubtfully,  as  if  she  might 
hear  the  master's  question  and  its  answer. 
But  the  girl  did  not  look  up ;  she  was  wind 
ing  a  gold  chain  about  her  wrist,  and  then 
uncoiling  it,  as  if  in  a  kind  of  reverie. 

Miss  Dailey  drew  close  to  the  master  and 
placed  her  hand  so  as  to  hide  her  lips. 

"  Don't  look  at  her  as  if  we  were  talking 
about  her,"  she  whispered  softly,  "  that  is  Elsie 
Venner." 

The  more  we  read  of  her,  the  more  her  sad 
beauty  fascinates  us. 

"  She  looked  as  if  she  might  hate,  but  could 
not  love.  She  hardly  smiled  at  anything,  spoke 
rarely,  but  seemed  to  feel  that  her  natural 
power  of  expression  lay  all  in  her  bright  eyes, 


94  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  force  of  which  so  many  had  felt,  but  none 
perhaps  had  tried  to  explain  to  themselves. 
A  person  accustomed  to  watch  the  faces  of 
those  who  were  ailing  in  body  or  mind,  and 
to  search  in  every  line  and  tint  for  some 
underlying  source  of  disorder,  could  hardly  help 
analyzing  the  impression  such  a  face  produced 
upon  him.  \The  light  of  those  beautiful  eves 
was  like  the  lustre  of  ice  ;  in  all  her  features 
there  was  nothing  of  that  human  warmth  which 
shows  that  sympathy  has  reached  the  soul 
beneath  the  mask  of  flesh  it  wears.  The  look 
was  that  of  remoteness,  of  utter  isolation. 
There  was  in  its  stony  apathy  the  pathos 
which  we  find  in  the  blind  who  show  no  film 
or  speck  over  the  organs  of  sight ;  for  Nature 
had  meant  her  to  be  lovely,  and  left  out 
nothing  but  love."  | 

The  mother  of  Elsie,  some  months  before  the 
birth  of  her  child,  had  been  bitten  by  a  rattle 
snake.  The  instant  use  of  powerful  antidotes 
seemed  to  arrest  the  fatal  poison,  but  death 
ensued  a  few  weeks  after  the  birth  of  her 
little  girl. 

*     "There    was    something    not    human    looking 
out    of     Elsie's     eyes.     .     .     There     were     two 


ELSIE  VENNER.  95 

warring  principles  in  that  superb  organization 
and  proud  soul.  One  made  her  a  woman, 
with  all  a  woman's  powers  and  longings.  The 
other  chilled  all  the  currents  of  outlets  for  her 
emotions.  It  made  her  tearless  and  mute, 
when  another  woman  would  have  wept  and 
pleaded.  And  it  infused  into  her  soul  some 
thing —  it  was  cruel  to  call  it  malice  —  which 
was  still  and  watchful  and  dangerous  —  which 
waited  its  opportunity,  and  then  shot  like  an 
arrow  from  its  bow  out  of  the  coil  of  brood 
ing  premeditation."  _ 

But  the  cloud  — "  the  ante-natal  impression 
which  had  mingled  an  alien  element  in  Elsie's 
nature" — is  mercifully  lifted  just  before  her 
death. 

She  had  fallen  into  a  light  slumber,  and 
when  she  awoke  and  looked  up  into  her 
father's  face,  she  seemed  to  realize  his  tender 
ness  and  affection  as  never  before. 

"Elsie  dear,"  he  said,  "we  were  thinking 
how  much  your  expression  was,  sometimes,  like 
that  of  your  sweet  mother.  If  you  could  but 
have  seen  her  so  as  to  remember  her !  " 

The  tender  look  and  tone,  the  yearning  of 
the  daughter's  heart  for  the  mother  she  had 


96  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

never  seen,  save  only  with  the  unfixed,  undis- 
tinguishable  eyes  of  earliest  infancy,  perhaps 
the  understanding  that  she  might  soon  rejoin 
her  in  another  state  of  being,  —  all  came  upon 
her  with  a  sudden  overflow  of  feeling  which 
broke  through  all  the  barriers  between  her 
heart  and  her  eyes,  and  Elsie  wept.  It  seemed 
to  her  father  as  if  the  malign  influence  —  evil 
spirit  it  might  almost  be  called  —  which  had 
pervaded  her  being,  had  at  least  -been  driven 
forth  or  exorcised,  and  that  these  tears  were 
at  once  the  sign  and  pledge  of  her  redeemed 
nature.  But  now  she  was  to  be  soothed  and 
not  excited.  After  her  tears  she  slept  again, 
and  the  look  her  face  wore  was  peaceful  as 
never  before. 

While  "Elsie  Venner"  is  a  purely  imaginary 
conception,  the  author  tells  us  that  after  be 
ginning  the  story  he  received  the  most  strik 
ing  confirmation  of  the  possibility  of  the 
existence  of  such  a  character.  The  reader  is 
awakened  to  new  views  of  human  responsibil 
ity  in  the  perusal  of  Elsie's  life,  and  with 
good  old  pastor  Honeywood  learns  a  lesson  of 
patience  with  his  fellow  creatures  in  their  in 
born  peculiarities  and  of  charity  in  judging 


ELSIE  VENNER.  97 

what  seem  to  him  wilful  faults  of  character. 
The  Professor's  story  while  centring  the  in 
terest  upon  Elsie,  gives  numerous  side  glances 
of  New  England  village  life ;  and  old  Sophy, 
Helen  Barley,  Silas  Peckham,  Bernard  Lang- 
don,  Dick  Venner,  and  the  good  Doctor  are 
portrayed  in  vivid  colors.  There  is  a  deal  of 
psychology  throughout  the  book,  and  not  a 
little  theology — good  wholesome  theology  too, 
as  the  following  brief  extract  shows : 

"  The  good  minister  was  as  kind-hearted  as 
if  he  had  never  groped  in  the  dust  and  ashes 
of  those  cruel  old  abstractions  which  have 
killed  out  so  much  of  the  world's  life  and 
happiness.  '  With  the  heart  man  believeth  unto 
righteousness ; '  a  man's  love  is  the  measure 
of  his  fitness  for  good  or  bad  company  here 
or  elsewhere.  Men  are  tattooed  with  their 
special  beliefs  like  so  many  South  Sea  Island 
ers;  but  ^a— -*eai — human...  heart,  with  divine 
love  in  it,  beats  with  the  same  glow  under 
all  the  patterns  of  all  earth's  thousand  tribes ! " 

The  pathos  of  poor  Elsie's  story  is  relieved 
now  and  then  by  humorous  descriptions  of 
country  manners  and  customs.  The  Sprowles' 
party  and  the  Widow  Rowen's  "tea-fight" 


98  OLIVER  WENDELL  UOLMES. 

give  a  vein  of  light  comedy  that  rests  the  sym 
pathetic  reader  as  a  sudden  merry  smile  upon 
a  grave  and  troubled  face. 

The  Guardian  Angel,  the  second  novel  of 
Doctor  Holmes,  was  not  published  until  iSo£^ 
but  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the  two 
stories,  for  there  is  a  strong  family  likeness 
between  thern.y'"Both  show  the  power  of  in 
herited  tendencies,  though  Myrtle  Hazard,  the 
heroine  of  The  Guardian  Angel,  has  no  alien 
element  in  her  blood  like  that  which  tormented 
poor  Elsie.  With  Myrtle  "it  was  as  when 
several  grafts,  bearing  fruit  that  ripens  at  dif 
ferent  times,  are  growing  upon  the  same 
stock.  Her  earlier  impulses  may  have  been 
derived  directly  from  her  father  and  mother, 
but  various  ancestors  came  uppermost  in  their 
time  before  the  absolute  and  total  result  of 
their  several  forces  had  found  its  equilibrium 
in  the  character  by  which  she  was  to  be 
known  as  an  individual.  These  inherited  im 
pulses  were  therefore  many,  conflicting,  some 
of  them  dangerous.  The  World,  the  Flesh, 
and  the  Devil  held  mortgages  -on  her  life  be 
fore  its  deed  was  put  in  her  hands ;  but 
sweet  and  gracious  influences  were  also  born 


ELSIE  VENNER.  99 

with  her;  and  the  battle  of  life  was  to  be 
fought  between  them,  God  helping  her  in  her 
need,  and  her  own  free  choice  siding  with  one 
or  the  other." 

The  scene  opens  in  -a  quiet  New  England 
village  which  is  roused  from  its  usual  lethargy 
by  the  startling  announcement  in  the  weekly 
paper  of  a  lost  child.  This  is  none  other  than 
the  little  orphan,  Myrtle  Hazard,  who  after  a 
few  dreary  years  in  the  dismal  Wither's  home 
stead,  escapes  by  night  in  her  little  boat,  is 
rescued  by  a  young  student  from  a  frightful 
death  at  the  rapids,  and  brought  back  to  her 
distressed  Aunt  Silence  by  good  old  Byles 
Gridley  —  the  true  "Guardian  Angel"  of  her 
life. 

When  old  Doctor  Hurlbut  "  ninety-two,  very 
deaf,  very  feeble,  yet  a  wise  counsellor  in 
doubtful  and  difficult  cases,"  conies  to  prescribe 
for  the  young  girl,  he  says  to  his  son : 

"  I've  seen  that  look  on  another  face  of  the 
same  blood  —  it's  a  great  many  years  ago,  and 
she  was  dead  before  you  were  born,  my  boy, 
—  but  I've  seen  that  look,  and  it  meant  trouble 
then,  and  I'm  afraid  it  means  trouble  now.  I 
see  some  danger  of  a  brain  fever.  And  if  she 


100  OLIVEE  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

doesn't  have  that,  then  look  out  for  some  hys- 
teiic  fits  that  will  make  mischief.  .... 
I've  been  through  it  all  before  in  that  same 
house.  Live  folks  are  only  dead  folks  warmed 
over.  I  can  see  'em  all  in  that  girl's  face.  — 
Handsome  Judith  to  begin  with.  And  that 
queer  woman,  the  Deacon's  mother  —  there's 
where  she  gets  that  hystericky  look.  Yes,  and 
the  black-eyed  woman  with  the  Indian  blood 
in  her  —  look  out  for  that  —  look  out  for  that. 

.  .  .  .  Four  generations  —  four  generations, 
man  and  wife  —  yes,  five  generations  before 
this  Hazard  child  I've  looked  on  with  these 
old  eyes.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  I  can  see 
something  of  almost  every  one  of  'em  in  this 
child's  face — it's  the  forehead  of  this  one,  and 
it's  the  eyes  of  that  one,  and  it's  that  other's 
mouth,  and  the  look  that  I  remember  in 
another,  and  when  she  speaks,  why,  I've  heard 
that  same  voice  before  —  yes,  yes  —  as  long 
ago  as  when  I  was  first  married." 

Aside  from  the  interest  of  the  story  there  is 
a  strange  fascination  in  tracing  the  development 
of  these  various  ancestral  traits. 

"  This  body  in  which  we  journey  across  the 
isthmus  between  the  two  oceans  is  not  a  pri- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  101 

vate  carriage,  but  an  omnibus,"  says  old  Byles 
Gridley  in  his  Thoughts  on  the  Universe — 
dead  book  that  was  destined  to  so  grand  a 
resurrection !  Surely  no  one  can  deny  the  suc 
cessive  development  of  inherited  bodily  aspects 
and  habitudes,  and  the  same  thing  happens,  the 
author  avers,  "in  the  mental  and  moral  nature, 
though  the  latter  may  be  less  obvious  to  com 
mon  observation." 

^TJwCiiiardian  Angel  while  a  deep  study 
of  the  Reflex  Function  in  its  higher  sphere,  is 
not  without  its  lighter,  more  mirthful  side.  Says 
The  London  News,  "  the  story  is  exceedingly 
humorous  and  comic  in  the  less  serious  chap 
ters.  There  is  no  such  minor  poet  in  the 
whole  range  of  fiction  as  the  immortal  Gifted 
Hopkins.  In  the  character  of  Hopkins  all  the 
foibles  and  vanities  of  the  literary  nature  are 
exemplified  in  the  most  mirthful  manner.  If 
Doctor  Holmes  has  more  characters  like  Gifted 
Hopkins  in  his  mind,  the  hilarity  of  two  con 
tinents  is  not  in  much  danger  of  being  extin 
guished." 

Here   is   a  glimpse   of    the    young   poet  when 
racked   with   jealousy: 

"  He   retired   pensive  from    the   interview,  and 


102  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

flinging  himself  at  his  desk,  attempted  wreak 
ing  his  thoughts  upon  expression,  to  borrow 
the  language  of  one  of  his  brother  bards,  in  a 
passionate  lyric  which  he  began  thus  : 

Another's  I 
Another's  !     O  the  pang,  the  smart ! 

Fate  owes  to  Love  a  deathless  grudge  — 
The  barbed  fang  has  rent  a  heart 

Which  —  which 

judge — judge  —  no,  not  judge.  Budge,  drudge, 
fudge — what,  a  disgusting  language  English 
is  !  Nothing  fit  to  couple  with  such  a  word  as 
grudge!  And  an  impassioned  moment  arrested 
in  full  flow,  stopped  short,  corked  up,  for  want 
of  a  paltry  rhyme!  Judge  —  budge  —  drudge 
nudge  —  oh  !  —  smudge  —  misery  !  —  fudge.  In 
vain  —  futile  —  no  use  —  all  up  for  to-night ! '"-i 
The  next  day  the  dejected  poet  "wandered 
about  with  a  dreadfully  disconsolate  look  upon 
his  countenance.  He  showed  a  falling-off  in 
his  appetite  at  tea-time,  which  surprised  and 

disturbed    his     mother The   most 

touching  evidence  of  his  unhappiness  —  whether 
intentional  on  the  result  of  accident  was  not 
evident  —  was  a  broken  heart,  which  he  left 
upon  his  plate,  the  meaning  of  which  was  as 


ELSIE  VENNER.  103 

plain  as  anything  in  the  language  of  flowers. 
His  thoughts  were  gloomy,  running  a  good 
deal  on  the  more  picturesque  and  impressive 
methods  of  bidding  a  voluntary  farewell  to  a 
world  which  had  allured  him  with  visions  of 
beauty  only  to  snatch  them  from  his  impassioned 
gaze.  His  mother  saw  something  of  this,  and  got 
from  him  a  few  disjointed  words,  which  led  her 
to  lock  up  the  clothes-line  and  hide  her  late  hus 
band's  razors — an  affectionate,  yet  perhaps  unnec 
essary  precaution,  for  self-elimination  contemplated 
from  this  point  of  view  by  those  who  have  the 
natural  outlet  of  verse  to  relieve  them  is  rarely 
followed  by  a  casualty.  It  may  be  considered 
as  implying  a  more  than  average  chance  for 
longevity ;  as  those  who  meditate  an  imposing 
finish  naturally  save  themselves  for  it,  and  are 
therefore  careful  of  their  health  until  the  time 
comes,  and  this  is  apt  to  be  indefinitely  post 
poned  so  long  as  there  is  a  poem  to  write  or 
a  proof  to  be  corrected." 

Gifted  Hopkins  survives  the  ordeal,  and  com 
pletes  his  volume  of  poems,  Blossoms  of  the 
Soul.  Good  old  master  Gridley,  who  foresees 
what  the  end  will  be,  offers  to  accompany  the 
young  poet  in  his  visit  to  the  city  publisher. 


104  >    OLIVER   WENDELL  IIOLMES. 

| 

What_jju_world_j3f__pathos  J:here  is  in  the  fond 
mother's  preparations  for  the  momentous  jour 
ney  'i  She  brings  down  from  the  garret  "  a 
capacious  trunk,  of  solid  wood,  but  covered 
with  leather,  and  adorned  with  brass-headed 
nails,  by  the  cunning  disposition  of  which,  also, 
the  paternal  initials  stood  out  on  the  rounded 
lid,  in  the  most  conspicuous  manner.  It  was 
his  father's  trunk,  and  the  first  thing  that 
went  into  it,  as  the  widow  lifted  the  cover, 
and  the  smothering  shut-up  smell  struck  an  old 
chord  of  associations,  was  a  single  tear-drop. 
How  well  she  remembered  the  time  when  she 
first  unpacked  it  for  her  young  husband,  and 
the  white  shirt  bosoms  showed  their  snowy 
plaits  !  O  dear,  dear  ! 

"  But  women  decant  their  affections,  sweet 
and  sound,  out  of  the  old  bottles  into  the  new 
ones  —  off  from  the  lees  of  the  past  genera 
tion,  clear  and  bright,  into  the  clean  vessels 
just  made  ready  to  receive  it.  Gifted  Hopkins 
was  his  mother's  idol,  and  no  wonder.  She 
had  not  only  the  common  attachment  of  a 
parent  for  him,  as  her  offspring,  but  she  felt 
that  her  race  was  to  be  rendered  illustrious  by 
his  genius,  and  thought  proudly  of  the  time 


ELSIE  VENNEE.  105 

when  some  future  biographer  would  mention 
her  own  humble  name,  to  be  held  in  lasting 
remembrance  as  that  of  the  mother  of  Hopkins." 

The  description  of  the  various  articles  that 
^went  into  the  trunk  is  humorous  enough. 

"  Best  clothes  and  common  clothes,  thick 
clothes  and  thin  clothes,  flannels  and  linens, 
socks  and  collars,  with  handkerchiefs  enough  to 
keep  the  pickpockets  busy  for  a  week,  with  a 
paper  of  gingerbread  and  some  lozenges  for 
gastralgia,  and  '  hot  drops,'  and  ruled  paper  to 
write  letters  on,  and  a  little  Bible  and  a  phial 
with  hiera  picra,  and  another  with  paregoric, 
and  another  with  'camphire'  for  sprains  and 
bruises.  Gifted  went  forth  equipped  for  every 
climate  from  the  tropic  to  the  pole,  and  armed 
against  every  malady  from  ague  to  zoster." 

The  poet's  interview  with  the  publisher  is 
one  of  the  best  things  in  the  book,  but  to  be 
thoroughly  enjoyed,  it  must  be  read  entire. 

The  genial,  kindly  nature  of  Doctor  Holmes 
is  -strllcihgly  shown  throughout  the  whole  volume. 
Good,  quaint  Byles  Gridley  endears  himself  more 
and  more  to  the  reader,  Gifted  Hopkins  finds 
in  his  heart's  choice  an  appreciative,  admiring 
audience  of  at  least  one,  Cyprian  Eveleth  and 


106  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

young  Doctor  Hurlbut  are  most  happily  disposed 
of,  Clement  Lindsay  receives  his  reward,  Myrtle 
Hazard  emerges  from  the  conflict  of  mingled 
lives  in  her  blood  with  the  dross  of  her  nature 
burned  away,  aunt  Silence  throws  off  her  melan 
choly,  Miss  Cynthia  Badlam  repents  of  her  evil 
manoeuvrings  and  dies  "with  the  comfortable 
assurance  that  she  is  going  to  a  better  world," 
the  Rev.  Joseph  Bellamy  Stoker  learns  to 
appreciate  his  patient  wife  —  even  Murray 
Bradshaw,  the  acknowledged  villain  of  the  book, 
is  not  without  a  few  redeeming  traits,  and  we 

close     the    Volume     with     a    flf^sf    »f    hearty 


FURTHER  ACQUAINTANCE.  107 


CHAPTER    XI. 

FURTHER     ACQUAINTANCE. 

B'ETWEEN  the  writing  of  Elsie  Venner 
and  The  Guardian  Angel,  Doctor  Holmes 
wrote  a  number  of  essays  for  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  some  of  which  were  afterwards  col 
lected  in  the  volume  entitled  Soundings  from 
the  Atlantic. 

Currents  and  Counter-currents  was  published 
in  1 86 1,  and  Border-lines  of  Knowledge  in  1862. 
The  two  latter  books  deal  with  scientific  sub 
jects,  but  are  written  in  such  an  attractive 
style  that  they  have  been  extremely  popular 
not  only  with  students  but  with  the  whole 
reading  public.  Songs  in  many  Keys,  a  volume 
of  poems  dedicated  to  his  mother,  was  pub 
lished  by  Doctor  Holme*  in  1862.  Mechanism 
in  Thoughts  and  Morals  appeared  in  1871,  the 
same  year  that  The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table 
was  running  as  a  serial  in  the  Atlantic 


108  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Monthly,  and  numerous  stray  poems  were  also 
written  in  this  prolific  decade.  In  1872  the 
poet's  breakfast  talk  was  published  in  book 
form.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  these  three 
volumes  —  The  Autocrat,  the  Professor,  and  the 
Poet.  As  a  series  they  are  as  necessary  to 
one  another  as  the  three  strands  of  a  cable, 
and  yet  each  volume  is,  in  a  certain  way, 
completed  in  itself.  Where  in  the  whole  range 
of  the  English  language,  or  indeed,  of  any 
language,  will  you  find  such  an  overflow  of 

spontaneous     wit     and     humor  ?      While    in     no 

»^  - 

sense  a  story  or  even  a  narrative,  the  breakfast 
talk  is  enlivened  by  wonderfully  life-like  char 
acters.  We  can  easily  imagine  ourselves  sitting 
beside  them  at  the  social  table,  and  just  as  it 
is  in  real  life,  these  chance  acquaintances  touch 
us  at  different  points,  awaken  various  degrees 
of  interest,  and  are  at  all  times  quite  distinct 
from  the  observer's  own  individuality. 

There  is  not  a  page  without  its  sparkle  of 
humor,  and  nugget  of  sound  philosophy  beneath, 
which  the  reader  appropriates,, to .  himself  in  a 
ddightfully  unconscious  manner  —  for  the  time 
being,  it  is  he  who  is  the  Autocrat,  the  Pro 
fessor,  the  Poet !  As  some  one  has  truly  said, 


FURTHER  ACQUAINTANCE.  109 

"  It  is  our  thoughts  which  Doctor  Holmes 
speaks  ;  it  is  our  humor  to  which  he  gives 
expression ;  it  is  the  pictures  of  our  own 
[fancy  that  he  clothes  in  words,  and  shows  us 
what  we  ourselves  thought,  and  only  lacked 
the  means  of  expressing.  -We  never  realized 
until  he  taught  us  by  his  magic  power  over 
us,  how  much  each  of  us  had  of  genius  and 
invention  and  expression." 

Each  book  has  its  little  romance,  and  the 
"  Poet "  introduces  a  poor  gentlewoman  whose 
story  interests  us  quite  as  much  as  does 
that  of  the  two  lovers. 

"  In  a  little  chamber,"  he  says,  "  into  which 
a  small  thread  of  sunshine  finds  its  way  for 
half  an  hour  or  so  every  day  during  a  month 
or  six  weeks  of  the  spring  or  autumn,  at  all 
other  times  obliged  to  content  itself  with 
ungilded  daylight,  lives  this  boarder,  whom, 
without  wronging  any  others  of  our  company, 
I  may  call,  as  she  is  very  generally  called  in 
the  household,  the  Lady 

"  From  an  aspect  of  dignified  but  undisguised 
economy  which  showed  itself  in  her  dress  as 
well  as  in  her  limited  quarters,  I  suspected  a 
story  of  shipwrecked  fortune,  and  determined  to 


110  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

question  our  Landlady.  That  worthy  woman 
was  delighted  to  tell  the  history  of  her  most 
distinguished  boarder.  She  was,  as  I  had  sup 
posed,  a  gentlewoman  whom  a  change  of  circum 
stances  had  brought  down  from  her  high 
estate.  —  Did  I  know  the  Goldenrod  family?  — 
Of  course  I  did.  —  Well,  the  lady  was  first 
cousin  to  Mrs.  Midas  Goldenrod.  She  had 
been  here  in  her  carriage  to  call  upon  her  — 
not  very  often.  —  Were  her  rich  relations  kind 
and  helpful  to  her? — Well,  yes;  at  least  they 
made  her  presents  now  and  then.  Three  or 
four  years  ago  they  sent  her  a  silver  waiter, 
and  every  Christmas  they  sent  her  a  bouquet  — 
it  must  cost  as  much  as  five  dollars,  the  Land 
lady  thought. 

"And  how  did  the  Lady  receive  these  valu 
able  and  useful  things  ? 

"  Every  Christmas  she  got  out  the  silver 
waiter  and  borrowed  a  glass  tumbler  and  filled 
it  with  water,  and  put  the  bouquet  in  it  and 
set  it  on  the  waiter.  It  smelt  sweet  enough 
and  looked  pretty  for  a  day  or  two,  but  the 
Landlady  thought  it  wouldn't  have  hurt  'em 
if  they'd  sent  a  piece  of  goods  for  a  dress,  or 
at  least  a  pocket  handkercher  or  two,  or  some- 


FURTHER  ACQUAINTANCE.  HI 

thing  or  other  that  she  could  '  a '  made  use 
of.  .... 

"What  did  she  do?  —  Why,  she  read,  and 
she  drew  pictures,  and  she  did  needlework 
patterns,  and  played  on  an  old  harp  she  had  ; 
the  gilt  was  mostly  off,  but  it  sounded  very 
sweet,  and  she  .sung  to  it,  sometimes,  those  old 
songs  that  used  to  be  in  fashion  twenty  or 
thirty  years  ago,  with  words  to  'em  that  folks 
could  understand 

"  Poor  Lady  !  She  seems  to  me  like  a  picture 
that  has  fallen  face  downward  on  the  dusty 
floor.  The  picture  never  was  as  needful  as  a 
window  or  a  door,  but  it  was  pleasant  to  see 
it  in  its  place,  and  it  would  be  pleasant  to  see 
it  there  again,  and  I  for  one,  should  be  thankful 
to  have  the  Lady  restored  by  some  turn  of  for 
tune  to  the  position  from  which  she  has  been  so 
cruelly  cast  down." 

Before  the  Poet  closes  his  breakfast  talk,  the 
poor  Lady  has,  through  the  efforts  of  another 
boarder,  the  Register  of  Deeds,  recovered  her 
property.  Mrs.  Midas  Goldenrod  makes  frequent 
and  longer  calls  — "  the  very  moment  her  rela 
tive,  the  Lady  of  our  breakfast  table,  began  to 
find  herself  in  a  streak  of  sunshine  she  came 


112  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

forward    with    a    lighted    candle     to     show    her 
which    way    her   path    lay    before    her. 

/^     "  The  Lady  saw  all  this,  how  plainly,  how  pain- 
)  fully!     yet    she     exercised     a     true     charity    for 

~N  the   weakness    of  her    relative.     Sensible    people 
/have   as    much   consideration  for   the    frailties    of 

/    the   rich   as  for   those   of  the   poor. 

\^,  "  The  Lady  that's  been  so  long  with  me  is 
going  to  a  house  of  her  own,"  said  the  Land 
lady,  "one  she  has  bought  back  again,  for  it 
used  to  belong  to  her  folks.  It's  a  beautiful 
house,  and  the  sun  shines  in  at  the  front  win 
dows  all  day  long.  She's  going  to  be  wealthy 
again,  but  it  doesn't  make  any  difference  in 
her  ways.  I've  had  boarders  complain  when  I 
was  doing  as  well  as  I  knowed  how  for  them, 
but  I  never  heerd  a  word  from  her  that  wasn't 
as  pleasant  as  if  she'd  been  talking  to  the  Gov 
ernor's  lady." 

The  strange  little  man,  denominated  "  Scara- 
bee,"  who  had  grown  to  look  so  much  like 
the  beetles  he  studied;  the  "  Member  of  the 
House"  with  his  Down  East  phrases;  the  little 
"Scheherazade"  who  furnishes  a  new  story 
each  week  for  the  newspapers  ;  —  the  good  look 
ing,  rosy-cheeked  salesman  "  of  very  polite  man- 


FURTHER  ACQUAINTANCE.  113 

ners,  only  a  little  more  brisk  than  the  approved 
style  of  carriage  permits,  as  one  in  the  habit 
of  springing  with  a  certain  alacrity  at  the  call  of 
a  customer;"  the  good  old  Master  of  Arts  who 
makes  so  many  sage  remarks  ;  —  the  young 
Astronomer  with  his  heart  confessions  in  the 
Wind-clouds  and  Star-drifts  —  all  these  are  new 
acquaintances  whom  we  are  loth  to  part  with, 
when  the  Landlady  announces  her  intention  of 
giving  up  the  famous  boarding-house,  and  the 
Poet  drops  the  curtain.  Would  that  the  Old 
Master  could  yet  be  induced  to  give  to  the 
public  those  "  notes  and  reflections  and  new 
suggestions "  of  his  marvellous  "  interleaved  vol 
ume!" 


J14  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

FAVORITES    OF    SONG. 

WHEN  we  come  to  consider  Doctor  Holmes 
on  the  poet  side  of  his  many-sided  nature, 
his    own   words   at    the    famous    Breakfast-Table 
are   vividly   brought   to   mind : 

"  The  works  of  other  men  live,  but  their 
personality  dies  out  of  their  labors ;  the  poet, 
who  reproduces  himself  in  his  creation,  as  no 
other  artist  does  or  can,  goes  down  to  poster 
ity  with  all  his  personality  blended  with  what 
ever  is  imperishable  in  his  song.  .  .  .  . 
A  single  lyric  is  enough,  if  one  can  only  find 
in  his  soul  and  finish  in  his  intellect  one  of 
those  jewels  fit  to  sparkle  on  the  stretched 
forefinger  of  all  time." 

In  the  poems  of  Doctor  Holmes  we  are  quite 
sure  there  are  many  just  such  lyrics  that  the 
world  will  not  willingly  let  die.  The  Last  Leaf, 
The  Voiceless,  The  Chambered  Nautilus,  The 


FA  VOEITES  OF  SONG.  115 

Two  Armies \  The  Old  Mans  Dream,  Under 
the  Violets,  Dorothy  Q.  —  but  where  shall  we 
stop  in  the  long  enumeration  of  popular  favor 
ites  like  these  ? 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  touches  the  heart  as 
well  as  the  intellect,  and  that  aside  from  his 
power  as  a  humorist,  is  one  great  secret  of 
his  success. 

Listen,  for  instance,   to   this   exquisite  bit : 

Yes,  dear  departed,  cherished  days 

Could   Memory's   hand  restore 
Your  Morning  light,   your  evening  rays 

From   Time's  gray   urn  once   more,  — 
Then  might  this  restless   heart  be  still, 

This   straining   eye   might   close, 
And  Hope   her  fainting   pinions  fold, 

While   the  fair  phantoms   rose. 

But,   like   a  child   in   ocean's   arms, 

We   strive   against   the    stream, 
Each  moment  farther  from   the   shore 

Where  life's   young  fountains   gleam ;  — 
Each  moment   fainter  wave  the   fields, 

And   wider  rolls   the   sea ; 
The  mist  grows  dark, — the   sun  goes  down, — 

Day  breaks,  —  and  where   are   we  ? 

Avd  what  a  dainty  touch  is  given  to  this 
Song  of  the  Sun-Worshipper s  Daughter! 


\ 


116  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Kiss   mine   eyelids,   beauteous   Morn 

Blushing  into  life  new   born  I 
Send  me  violets  for  my  hair 

And   thy   russet  robe  to   wear, 
And  thy  ring   of  rosiest  hue 

Set  in  drops  of  diamond  dew  I 

•  •  •  •  •  •  • 

Kiss  my  lips,  thou  Lord  of  light, 

Kiss  my  lips   a   soft  good-night  ! 
Westward   sinks  thy   golden   car; 

Leave  me   but  the   evening  star 
And  my  solace  that  shall  be 

Borrowing  all  its   light  from   thee. 

And  where  will  you  find  a  more  pathetic 
picture  than  that  of  the  old  musician  in  The  Silent 
Melody? 

Bring  me  my  broken  harp,   he   said; 

We  both   are  wrecks  —  but   as  ye   will  — 
Though  all   its  ringing  tones   have  fled, 
Their  echoes   linger  round  it   still  ; 
It  had   some   golden  strings,   I   know, 
But  that  was   long  —  how  long!  —  ago. 

I  cannot  see   its   tarnished  gold  ; 

I   cannot   hear  its   vanished  tone  ; 
Scarce   can   my  trembling   fingers   hold 
The   pillared  frame   so  long  their  own  ; 
We   both   are  wrecks  —  a  while  ago 
It  had   some   silver   strings,   I   know. 


.FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  117 

But   on  them   Time   too   long    has   played 

The   solemn   strain   that  knows  no   change, 
And  where  of  old   my   fingers  strayed 
.    The   chords   they   find   are   new   and   strange  — 
Yes  ;    iron    strings  —  I  know  —  I  know  — 
We  both  are   wrecks  of  long  ago. 

With   pitying     smiles     the     broken      harp     is 
brought    to   him.      Not   a   single   string   remains. 

But  seel    like   children  overjoyed, 

His  fingers   rambling   through   the   void! 

They  gather  softly  around  the  old  musician. 

Rapt   in  his   tuneful   trance  he   seems; 

His  fingers   move  ;    but  not   a   sound ! 

A  silence   like   the   song  of  dreams.    .    .    . 

"  There !    ye  have  heard   the  air,"  he  cries, 

"  That  brought  the   tears  from   Marian's   eyes  I " 

The  poem   closes   with   these   fine   stanzas : 

"Jb^smile  not  at   his   fond    conceit, 

Nor    deem   his  fancy   wrought    in    vain; 


>    discon 


No"  discord  mars  the  silent   strain 
Scored   on   life's   latest,   starlit   page 
The   voiceless  melody  of  age. 

Sweet   are   the   lips   of  all   that  sing, 

When   Nature's  music  breathes  unsought, 


118  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES* 

But   never  yet   could   voice   or   string 
So  truly   shape   our   tenderest   thought, 
As  when   by   life's   decaying   fire 
Our   fingers  sweep   the   stringless   lyre! 

Though  entirely  different  in  style,  Bill  and 
Joe  is  another  of  those  heart-reaching,  tear- 
starting  poems. 

Listen,   for   instance,   to   these   few   verses : 

Come,   dear   old   comrade,  you   and   I 
Will   steal  an   hour  from   days   gone   by ; 
The  shining   days   when   life   was   new, 
And   all   was  bright   with   morning   dew, 
The   lusty  days   of  long   ago 
When  you  were   Bill  and   I   was  Joe. 

You've  won   the   judge's   ermined   robe, 
You've   taught   your   name   to   half  the   globe, 
You've  sung   mankind   a  deathless  strain; 
You've   made   the   dead   past   live   again ; 
The   world  may   call  you   what  it   will, 
But  you  and   I   are  Joe   and    Bill. 

How   Bill   forgets   his   hour   of   pride, 
While  Joe  sits   smiling  at   his  side ; 
How  Joe,  in   spite   of  time's   disguise 
Finds   the   old   schoolmate   in   his  eyes, — 
Those   calm,   stern   eyes    that   melt   and  fill, 
As  Joe   looks    fondly   up    at   Bill. 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  119 

Ah,    pensive   scholar,  what   is   fame  ? 

A   fitful   tongue   of  leaping   flame : 

A   giddy   whirlwind's   fickle   gust 

That   lifts   a  pinch  of  mortal    dust; 

A   few   swift  years   and   who   can   show 

Which   dust   was   Bill,   and   which   was   Joe? 

The  weary  idol  takes  his   stand, 

Holds   out   his   bruised   and   aching   hand, 

While  gaping   thousands   come   and  go, — 

How   vain  it  seems,   his   empty  show ! 

Till   all   at   once   his  pulses   thrill : 

'Tis   poor   old  Joe's   God    bless   you,   Bill! 

The  earlier  poems  of  Doctor  Holmes  are 
frequently  written  in  the  favorite  measures  of 
Pope  and  Hood.  This  is  not  at  all  strange 
when  we  remember  that  in  the  boyhood  of 
Doctor  Holmes  these  two  poets  were  the  most 
popular  of  all  the  English  bards.  In  his  later 
poems,  however,  we  find  an  endless  variety  of 
rhythms,  arid  the  careful  reader  will  notice  in 
every  instance,  a  wonderful  adaptation  of  the 
various  poetical  forms  to  the  particular  thought 
the  poet  wishes  to  convey. 

How  well  Doctor  Holmes  understands  the 
"  mechanism "  of  verse  may  be  seen  from  his 
Physiology  of  Versification  and  the  Harmonies 
of  Organic  and  Animal  Life,  a  valuable  article 


120  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

published  in  the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical 
Journal  of  January  7,  1875- 

"  Respiration,"  he  says, "  has  an  intimate  relation 
to  the  structure  of  metrical  compositions,  and 
the  reason  why  octoslyllabic  verse  is  so  easy  to 
read  aloud  is  because  it  follows  more  exactly 
than  any  other  measure  the  natural  rhythm  of 
the  respiration 

"  The  ten  syllable,  or  heroic  line  has  a  peculiar 
majesty  from  the  very  fact  that  its  pronunciation 
requires  a  longer  respiration  than  is  ordinary. 

"  The  caesura,  it  is  true,  comes  in  at  irregular 
intervals  and  serves  as  a  breathing  place,  but 
its  management  requires  care  in  reading,  and 
entirely  breaks  up  the  natural  rhythm  of  breath 
ing.  The  reason  why  the  'common  metre'  of 
our  hymn  books  and  the  fourteen  syllable  line 
of  Chapman's  Homer  is  such  easy  reading  is 
because  of  the  short  alternate  lines  of  six  and 
eight  syllables.  One  of  the  most  irksome  of  all 
measures  is  the  twelve -syllable  line  in.  which 
Drayton's  Polyolbion  is  written.  While  the  four 
teen  syllable  line  can  be  easily  divided  in  half 
in  reading,  the  twelve  syllable  one  is  too  much 
for  one  expiration  and  not  enough  for  two,  and 
for  this  reason  has  been  avoided  by  poets. 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  121 

"  There  is,  however,  the  personal  equation  to  be 
taken  into  account.  A  person  of  quiet  tempera 
ment  and  ample  chest  may  habitually  breathe  but 
fourteen  times  in  a  minute,  and  the  heroic  measure 
will  therefore  be  very  easy  reading  to  him  ;  a  nar 
row-chested,  nervous  person,  on  the  contrary,  who 
breathes  oftener  than  twenty  times  a  minute,  may 
prefer  the  seven-syllable  verse,  like  that  of  Dyer's 
Grongar  Hill,  to  the  heroic  measure,  and  quick- 
breathing  children  will  recite  Mother  Goose  melo 
dies  with  delight,  when  long  metres  would  weary 
and  distract  them. 

"  Nothing  in  poetry  or  in  vocal  music  is  widely   I 
popular  that  is  not  calculated  with  strict  reference  / 
to  the  respiratory  function.     All  the  early  ballad  I 
poetry  shows  how  instinctively  the  reciters  accom 
modated  their  rhythm  to  their  breathing:  Chevy 
Chace,  or  The  Babes   in  the  Wood  may  be  taken 
as   an  example  for  verse.     God   save    the    Kingy 
which  has  a  compass  of  some  half  a  dozen  notes, 
and  takes  pne  expiration,  economically  used,  to  each 
line,  may  be  referred  to  as  the  musical  illustration. 

"  The  unconscious  adaptation  of  voluntary  life  to 
the  organic  rhythm  is  perhaps  a  more  pervading 
fact  than  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  considering 
it.  One  can  hardly  doubt  that  Spenser  breathed 


122  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

habitually  more  slowly  than  Prior,  and  that  Anac- 
reon  had  a  quicker  respiration  than  Homer.  And 
this  difference,  which  we  conjecture  from  their 
rhythmical  instincts,  if  our  conjecture  is  true, 
probably,  almost  certainly,  characterized  all  their 
vital  movements." 

So  much  for  the  bare  vehicle  of  verse, 
but  the  poet  himself,  as  Doctor  Holmes  says  in 
his  review  of  "Exotics,"  is  a  medium,  a  clairvoyant. 
"  The  will  is  first  called  in  requisition  to  exclude 
interfering  outward  impressions  and  alien  trains  of 
thought.  After  a  certain  time  the  second  state  or 
adjustment  of  the  poet's  double  consciousness  (for 
he  has  two  states,  just  as  the  somnambulists  have) 
sets  up  its  own  automatic  movement,  with  its  spe 
cial  trains  of  ideas  and  feelings  in  the  thinking  and 
emotional  centres.  As  soon  as  the  fine  frenzy,  or 
quasi  trance-state,  is  fairly  established,  the  con 
sciousness  watches  the  torrent  of  thoughts  and 
arrests  the  ones  wanted,  singly  with  their  fitting 
expression,  or  in  groups  of  fortunate  sequences 
which  he  cannot  better  by  after  treatment.  As  the 
poetical  vocabulary  is  limited,  and  its  plasticity 
lends  itself  only  to  certain  moulds,  the  mind  works 
under  great  difficulty,  at  least  until  it  has  acquired 
by  practice  such  handling  of  language  that  every 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  123 

possibility  of  rhythm  or  rhyme  offers  itself  actually 
or  potentially  to  the  clairvoyant  perception  simul 
taneously  with  the  thought  it  is  to  embody.  Thus 
poetical  composition  is  the  most  intense,  the  most 
exciting,  and  therefore  the  most  exhausting  of  men 
tal  exercises.  It  is  exciting  because  its  mental 
states  are  a  series  of  revelations  and  surprises  ;  in 
tense  on  account  of  the  double  strain  upon  the 
attention.  The  poet  is  not  the  same  man  who 
seated  himself  an  hour  ago  at  his  desk  with  the 
dust-cart  and  the  gutter,  or  the  duck-pond  and  the 
hay-stack,  and  the  barnyard  fowls  beneath  his  win 
dow.  He  is  in  the  forest  with  the  song-birds  ;  he 
is  on  the  mountain-top  with  the  eagles.  He  sat 
down  in  rusty  broadcloth,  he  is  arrayed  in  the 
imperial  purple  of  his  singing  robes.  Let  him 
alone,  now,  if  you  are  wise,  for  you  might  as  well 
have  pushed  the  arm  that  was  finishing  the  smile 
of  a  Madonna,  or  laid  a  veil  before  a  train  that  had 
a  queen  on  board,  as  thrust  your  untimely  question 
on  this  half-cataleptic  child  of  the  Muse,  who 
hardly  knows  whether  he  is  in  the  body  or  out  of 
the  body.  And  do  not  wonder  if,  when  the  fit  is 
over,  he  is  in  some  respects  like  one  who  is  recover 
ing  after  an  excess  of  the  baser  stimulants." 

As  a  writer  of  humorous  poetry,  it  is  safe  to  say 


124  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

that  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  is  without  a  peer 
The  Height  of  the  Ridiculous,  The  September 
Gale,  The  Hot  Season,  The  Deacons  Master-piece, 
Nux  Postcoenatica,  The  Stethoscope  Song,  how 
many  a  "cobweb"  have  they  shaken  from  the 
tired  brain ! 

And  where  in  the  whole  range  of  humorous 
literature  will  you  find  a  more  delightful  morsel 
than  the  "Parting  Word"  that  follows  ?  — 

I  must  leave  thee,  lady  sweet ! 
Months  shall  waste  before  we  meet ; 
Winds  are  fair  and  sails  are  spread, 
Anchors  leave  their  ocean  bed ; 
Ere  this  shining  day  grows  dark, 
Skies  shall  guide  my  shoreless  bark; 
Through  thy  tears,  O  lady  mine, 
Read  thy  lover's  parting  line. 

When  the  first  sad  sun  shall  set, 
Thou  shalt  tear  thy  locks  of  jet; 
When  the  morning  star  shall  rise 
Thou  shalt  wake  with  weeping  eyes  ; 
When  the  second  sun  goes  down 
Thou  more  tranquil  shalt  be  grown, 
Taught  too  well  that  wild  despair 
Dims  thine  eyes,  and  spoils  thy  hair. 

All  the  first  unquiet  week 

Thou  shalt  wear  a  smileless  cheek ; 

In  the  first  month's  second  half 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  125 

Thou  shall  once  attempt  to  laugh ; 
Then  in  Pickwick  thou  shall  dip, 
Lightly  puckering  round  the  lip, 
Till  at  last,  in  sorrow's  spite, 
Samuel  makes  thee  laugh  outright. 

While  the  first  seven  mornings  last, 
Round  thy  chamber  bolted  fast 
Many  a  youth  shall  fume  and  pout, 
"  Hang  the  girl,  she's  always  out !  " 
While  the  second  week  goes  round, 
Vainly  shall  they  sing  and  pound; 
When  the  third  week  shall  begin, 
"  Martha,  let  the  creature  in  1 " 

Now  once  more  the  flattering  throng 
Round  thee  flock  with  smile  and  song, 
But  thy  lips  unweaned  as  yet, 
Lisp,  "  O,  how  can  I  forget  !  " 
Men  and  devils  both  contrive 
Traps  for  catching  girls  alive ; 
Eve  was  duped,  and  Helen  kissed, 
How,  O  how  can  you  resist  ? 

First,  be  careful  of  your  fan, 
Trust  it  not  to  youth  or  man; 
Love  has  filled  a  pirate's  sail 
Often  with  its  perfumed  gale. 
Mind  your  kerchief  most  of  all, 
Fingers  touch  when  kerchiefs  fall ; 
Shorter  ell  than  mercers  clip 
Is  the  space  from  hand  to  lip. 


126  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Trust  not  such  as  talk  in  tropes 
Full  of  pistols,  daggers,  ropes; 
All  the  hemp  that  Russia  bears 
Scarce  would  answer  lovers'  prayers ; 
Never  thread  was  spun  so  fine, 
Never  spider  stretched  the  line, 
Would  not  hold  the  lovers  true 
That  would  really  swing  for  you. 

Fiercely  some  shall  storm  and  swear, 
Beating  breasts  in  black  despair  ; 
Others  murmur  with  a  sigh 
You  must  melt  or  they  will  die ; 
Painted  words  on  empty  lies, 
Grubs  with  wings  like  butterflies; 
Let  them  die,  and  welcome,  too  ; 
Pray  what  better  could  they  do  ? 

Fare  thee  well,  if  years  efface 
From  thy  heart  love's  burning  trace, 
Keep,  O  keep  that  hallowed  seat 
From  the  tread  of  vulgar  feet; 
If  the  blue  lips  of  the  sea 
Wait  with   icy  kiss  for  me, 
Let  not  thine  forget  that  vow, 
Sealed  how  often,  love,  as  now  1 

In  his  Mechanism  in  Thought  and  Morals,  Doctor 
Holmes  reveals  one  of  the  secrets  of  humorous 
writing.  "  The  poet,"  he  says,  "  sits  down  to  his 
desk  with  an  odd  conceit  in  his  brain  ;  and  pre- 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  127 

sently  his  eyes  filled  with  tears,  his  thought  slides 
into  the  minor  key,  and  his  heart  is  full  of  sad  and 
plaintive  melodies.  Or  he  goes  to  his  work,  say 
ing— 

"'To-night  I  would  have  tears;'  and  before  he 
rises  from  his  table  he  has  written  a  burlesque, 
such  as  he  might  think  fit  to  send  to  one  of  the 
comic  papers,  if  these  were  not  so  commonly 
cemeteries  of  hilarity  interspersed  with  cenotaphs 
of  wit  and  humor.  These  strange  hysterics  of  the 
intelligence  which  make  us  pass  from  weeping  to 
laughter,  and  from  laughter  back  again  to  weeping, 
must  be  familiar  to  every  impressible  nature  ;  and 
all  this  is  as  automatic,  involuntary,  as  entirely  self- 
evolved  by  a  hidden,  organic  process,  as  are  the 
changing  moods  of  the  laughing  and  crying  woman. 
The  poet  always  recognizes  a  dictation  ab  extra; 
and  we  hardly  think  it  a  figure  of  speech  when  we 
talk  of  his  inspiration." 

Of  Doctor  Holmes'  inimitable  vers  d*  occasion  we 
select  the  following : 

At  the  reception  given  to  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe  on  her  seventieth  birthday,  at  Governor 
Claflin's  beautiful  summer  residence  in  Newton- 
ville,  Doctor  Holmes  read  the  following  witty 
and  characteristic  poem : 

4 


128  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

If  every  tongue  that  speaks  her  praise 
For  whom  I  shape  my  tinkling  phrase 

Were  summoned  to  the  table, 
The  vocal  chorus  that  would  meet 
Of  mingling  accents  harsh  or  sweet 
From  every  land  and  tribe  would  beat 

The  polyglots  of  Babel. 

Briton  and  Frenchman,  Swede  and  Dane, 
Turk,  Spaniard,  Tartar  of  Ukraine, 

Hidalgo,  Cossack,  Cadi, 
High  Dutchman  and  Low  Dutchman,  too, 
The  Russian  serf,  the  Polish  Jew, 
Arab,  Armenian  and  Mantchoo 

Would  shout,  "  We  know  the  lady." 

Know  her !     Who  knows  not  Uncle  Tom 
And  her  he  learned  his  gospel  from 

Has  never  heard  of  Moses ; 
Full  well  the  brave  black  hand  we  know 
That  gave  to  freedom's  grasp  the  hoe 
That  killed  the  weed  that  used  to  grow 

Among  the  Southern  roses. 

When  Archimedes,  long  ago, 
Spoke  out  so  grandly  "  dospou  sfo,— 

Give  me  a  place  to  stand  on, 
I'll  move  your  planet  for  you,  now," 
He  little  dreamed  or  fancied  how 
The  sto  at  last  should  find  its  pou 

For  woman's  faith  to  land  on. 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  129 

Her  lever  was  the  wand  of  art, 
Her  fulcrum  was  the  human  heart 

Whence  all  unfailing  aid  is ; 
She  moved  the  earth !  its  thunders  pealed, 
Its  mountains  shook,  its  temples  reeled, 
The  blood -red  fountains  were  unsealed, 

And  Moloch  sunk  to  Hades. 

All  through  the  conflict,  up  and  down 
Marched  Uncle  Tom  and  Old  John  Brown, 

One  ghost,  one  form  ideal, 
And  which  was  false  and  which  was  true, 
And  which  was  mightier  of  the  two, 
The  wisest  sibyl  never  knew, 

For  both  alike  were  real. 

Sister,  the  holy  maid  does  well 

Who  counts  her  beads  in  convent  cell, 

Where  pale  devotion  lingers ; 
But  she  who  serves  the  sufferer's  needs, 
Whose  prayers  are  spelt  in  loving  deeds 
May  trust  the  Lord  will  count  her  beads 

As  well  as  human  fingers. 

When  Truth  herself  was  Slavery's  slave 
Thy  hand  the  prisoned  suppliant  gave 

The  rainbow  wings  of  fiction. 
And  Truth  who  soared  descends  to-day 
Bearing  an  angel's  wreath  away, 
Its  lilies  at  thy  feet  to  lay 

With  heaven's  own  benediction. 


130  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

The  following  poem  was  read  by  Doctor 
Holmes  at  the  Unitarian  Festival,  June  2, 
1882. 

The  waves  upbuild  the  wasting  shore : 

Where  mountains  towered  the  billows  sweep : 
Yet  still  their  borrowed  spoils  restore 

And  raise  new  empires  from  the  deep. 
So,  while  the  floods  of  thought  lay  waste 

The  old  domain  of  chartered  creeds, 
The  heaven-appointed  tides  will  haste 

To  shape  new  homes  for  human  needs. 
Be  ours  to  mark  with  hearts  unchilled 

The  change  an  outworn  age  deplores  ; 
The  legend  sinks,  but  Faith  shall  build 

A  fairer  throne  on  new-found  shores, 
The  star  shall  glow  in  western  skies, 

That  shone  o'er  Bethlehem's  hallowed  shrine, 
And  once  again  the  temple  rise 

That  crowned  the  rock  of  Palestine. 
Not  when  the  wondering  shepherds  bowed 

Did  angels  sing  their  latest  song, 
Nor  yet  to  Israel's  kneeling  crowd 

Did  heaven's  one  sacred  dome  belong  — 
Let  priest  and  prophet  have  their  dues, 

The  Levite  counts  but  half  a  man. 
Whose  proud  "salvation  of  the  Jews" 

Shuts  out  the  good  Samaritan  ! 
Though  scattered  far  the  flock  may  stray, 

His  own  the  shepherd  still  shall  claim,— 
The  saints  who  never  learned  to  pray, — 

The  friends  who  never  spoke  his  name. 


FAVORITES  OF  SONCT.  131 

Dear  Master,  while  we  hear  thy  voice, 
That  says,  "  The  truth  shall  make  you  free," 

Thy  servant  still,  by  loving  choice, 
O  keep  us  faithful  unto  Thee  1 

Doctor  Holmes  being  unable  to  attend  the 
annual  reunion  of  the  Harvard  Club  in  New 
York  City,  February  21,  1882,  sent  the  fol 
lowing  letter  and  sonnet  which  were  read  at 
the  banquet : 

DEAR  BROTHERS  ALUMNI  : 

As  I  am  obliged  to  deny  myself  the  plea 
sure  of  being  with  you,  I  do  not  feel  at  lib 
erty  to  ask  many  minutes  of  your  time  and 
attention.  I  have  compressed  into  the  limits 
of  a  sonnet  the  feelings  I  am  sure  we  all 
share  that,  besides  the  roof  that  shelters  us 
we  have  need  of  some  wider  house  where  we 
can  visit  and  find  ourselves  in  a  more  ex 
tended  circle  of  sympathy  than  the  narrow 
ring  of  a  family,  and  nowhere  can  we  seek  a 
truer  and  purer  bond  of  fellowship  than  under 
the  benignant  smile  of  our  Alma  Mater.  Let 
me  thank  you  for  the  kindness  which  has  signi 
fied  to  me  that  I  should  be  welcome  at  your 
festival. 


132  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

In  all  the  rewards  of  a  literary  life  none 
is  more  precious  than  the  kindly  recog 
nition  of  those  who  have  clung  to  the  heart 
of  the  same  nursing  mother,  and  will  always 
flee  to  each  other  in  the  widest  distances  of 
space,  and  let  us  hope  in  those  unbounded 
realms  in  which  we  may  not  utterly  forget 
our  earthly  pilgrimage  and  its  dear  compan 
ions. 

Very   sincerely   yours, 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

SONNET. 

Yes,  home  is   sweet !    and  yet  we  needs   must   sigh, 
Restless   until   our   longing   souls   have  found 
Some  realm   beyond  the   fireside's   narrow  bound, 

Where  slippered   ease   and  sleepy   comfort  lie, 

Some  fair  ideal   form   that   cannot  die, 

By  age  dismantled   and   by  change   uncrowned, 
Else   life   creeps   circling   in  the   self-same   round, 

And  the  low   ceiling  hides   the  lofty  sky. 

Ah,  then  to   thee   our   truant   hearts   return, 
Dear  mother,   Alma,   Casta  —  spotless,   kind  1 
Thy  sacred  walls   a  larger   home   we   find, 

And   still   for   thee  thy  wandering   children   yearn, 

While   with   undying   fires   thine   altars   burn, 
Where  all   our   holiest  memories   rest   enshrined. 


FAVORITES  OF  SONG.  139 

POEM   READ   BY  DOCTOR   HOLMES   AT  THE  WHIT 
TIER  CELEBRATION. 

I   believe   that  the   copies   of  verses   I've   spun, 
Like   Scheherazade's   tales,   are   a  thousand   and   one, 
You   remember  the   story  —  those   mornings   in   bed  — 
'Twas   the  turn  of  a  copper  —  a  tale   or   a  head. 

A   doom   like   Scheherazade's   falls   upon  me 
In   a  mandate   as   stern  as   the  Sultan's   decree  ; 
I'm  a  florist   in   verse,   and   what  -would  people   say 
If   I  came    to   a   banquet   without   my   bouquet  ? 

It  is  trying,  no  doubt,  when  the  company  knows 
Just  the   look   and  the   smell   of  each   lily   and  rose, 
The  green  of  each   leaf  in  the   sprigs   that   I    bring, 
And  the  shape   of  the  bunch   and  the  knot   of  the  string. 

Yes,  'the   style  is   the   man,'   and  the   nib   of   one's   pen 
Makes   the  same   mark   at  twenty,  and  threescore  and  ten ; 
It  is   so   in  all   matters,   if  truth  may  be   told ; 
Let  one   look   at  the   cast   he   can  tell   you  the  mould. 

How  we   all   know  each   other  I     No   use   in  disguise  ; 
Through  the   holes   in  the   mask  comes   the  flash  of  the  ey». 
We   can  tell  by  his — somewhat  —  each   one   of  our  tribe, 
As   we   know   the   old  hat   which  we   cannot  describe. 

Though  in   Hebrew,   in   Sanscrit,  in   Choctaw,  you   write, 
Sweet  singer  who  gave   us   the   Voices   of  Night, 
Though  in  buskin   or   slipper   your  song   may   be   shod, 
Or  the   velvety   verse   that   Evangeline   trod. 


134  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

We   shall   say,   '  You   can't   cheat   us  —  we   know   it  is   you  — - 
There   is   one   voice   like   that,  but   there   cannot   be   two, 
Maestro,  whose   chant   like   the   dulcimer   rings ; 
And   the  woods   will   be   hushed   when   the  nightingale   sings. 

And   he,  so  serene,  so   majestic,  so   true, 

Whose  temple   hypaethral   the   planets   shine  through, 

Let  us  catch  but  five  words  from  that  mystical   pen 

We  should  know   our   one   sage   from    all   children   of  men. 

And   he   whose   bright   image   no   distance   can   dim, 
Through   a  hundred   disguises   we   can't   mistake    him, 
Whose   play  is   all   earnest,   whose  wit   is   the   edge 
(With   a  beetle   behind)   of  a   sham-splitting  wedge. 

Do  you   know  whom  we   send   you,   Hidalgos   of   Spain  ? 
Do  you   know  your   old  friends   when  you   see    them   again  ? 
H  jsea  was   Sancho  I  you   Dons   of   Madrid, 
But   Sancho  that   wielded  the  lance  of  the  Cid  1 

And  the  wood-thrush   of  Essex  —  you   know  whom  I  mean, 
Whose  song  echoes   round   us  when  he   sits   unseen, 
Whose   heart-throbs   of   verse   through   our  memories   thrill 
Like  a  breath  from  the  wood,  like  a  breeze  from  the  hill. 

So  fervid,  so   simple,   so   loving,   so   pure, 

We   hear  but   one   strain  and  our  verdict  is   sure  -*» 

Thee   cannot  elude   us  —  no   further  we   search  — 

'Tis   Holy  George   Herbert   cut   loose   from   his   church  I 

We  think  it  the  voice   of    a  cherub   that  sings  — 
Alas  I    we   remember  that   angels   have    wings  — 


FAVOEITES  OF  SONG.  135 

What  story   is   this  of   the   day  of  his  birth  ? 

Let   him  live   to   a  hundred  !   we  want   him  on   earth  1 

One   life   has   been   paid   him   ( in  gold )  by  the   sun ; 
One   account   has   been   squared   and  another  begun ; 
But  he   never  will   die   if  he   lingers   below 
Till   we've   paid   him   in  love   half  the   balance    we   owe! 


136  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE   MAN   OF   SCIENCE. 

WHAT  decided  me,"  says  Doctor  Holmes, 
"  to  give  up  Law  and  apply  myself  to  Medi 
cine,  I  can  hardly  say,  but  I  had  from  the  first  looked 
upon  my  law  studies  as  an  experiment.  At  any 
rate,  I  made  the  change,  and  soon  found  myself  in 
troduced  to  new  scenes  and  new  companionships. 
"  I  can  scarcely  credit  my  memory  when  I  recall 
the  first  impressions  produced  upon  me  by  sights 
afterwards  become  so  familiar  that  they  could  no 
more  disturb  a  pulse-beat  than  the  commonest  of 
every-day  experiences.  The  skeleton,  hung  aloft 
like  a  gibbeted  criminal,  looked  grimly  at  me  as  I 
entered  the  room  devoted  to  the  students  of  the 
school  I  had  joined,  just  as  the  fleshless  figure  of 
Time,  with  the  hour-glass  and  scythe,  used  to  glare 
upon  me  in  my  childhood  from  the  New  England 
Primer.  The  white  faces  in  the  beds  at  the  Hos 
pital  found  their  reflection  in  my  own  cheeks  which 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  137 

lost  their  color  as  I  looked  upon  them.  All  this 
had  to  pass  away  in  a  little  time  ;  I  had  chosen  my 
profession,  and  must  meet  all  its  aspects  until  they 

lost  their  power  over  my  sensibility 

"  After  attending  two  courses  of  lectures  in  the 
School  of  the  University,  I  went  to  Europe  to  con 
tinue  my  studies.  I  can  hardly  believe  my  own 
memory  when  I  recall  the  old  practitioners  and 
professors  who  were  still  going  round  the  hospitals 
when  I  mingled  with  the  train  of  students  in  the 
ficole  de  Medicine." 

Of  the  famous  Baron  Boyer,  author  of  a  nine- 
volumed  book  on  surgery,  Doctor  Holmes  says,  "  I 
never  saw  him  do  more  than  look  as  if  he  wanted 
to  cut  a  good  collop  out  of  a  patient  he  was  examin 
ing."  Baron  Larrey,  the  favorite  surgeon  of  Na 
poleon,  he  describes  as  a  short,  square,  substantial 
man,  with  iron-gray  hair,  red  face,  and  white  apron. 
To  go  round  the  Hotel  des  Invalides  with  Larrey 
was  to  live  over  the  campaign  of  Napoleon,  to  look 
on  the  sun  of  Austerlitz,  to  hear  the  cannon  of 
Marengo,  to  struggle  through  the  icy  waters  of  the 
Beresina,  to  shiver  in  the  snows  of  the  Russian 
retreat,  and  to  gaze  through  the  battle  smoke  upon 
the  last  charge  of  the  red  lancers  on  the  redder 
field  of  Waterloo. 


138  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Then  there  was  Baron  Dupuytren,  "ce  grand 
homme  de  lautre  cotf  de  la  rivtert, —  with  his  high, 
full-doomed  head  and  oracular  utterances ;  Lis- 
france,  the  great  drawe/  of  blood  and  hewer  of 
members  ;  Velpeau,  who,  coming  to  Paris  in  wooden 
shoes,  and  starving,  almost,  at  first,  raised  himself 
to  great  eminence  as  surgeon  and  author ;  Brous- 
sais,  the  knotty-featured,  savage  old  man  who  re 
minded  one  of  a  volcano,  which  had  well-nigh  used 
up  its  fire  and  brimstone,  and  Gabriel  Audral, 
the  rapid,  fluent,  fervid  and  imaginative  speaker. 

"The  object  of  our  reverence,  however,  I 
might  almost  say  idolatry,"  adds  Doctor  Holmes, 
"  was  Pierre  Charles  Alexandre  Louis,  a  tall, 
rather  spare,  dignified  personage,  of  serene  and 
grave  aspect,  but  with  a  pleasant  smile  and 
kindly  voice  for  the  student  with  whom  he 
came  into  personal  relations. 

"  If  I  summed  up  the  lessons  of  Louis  in 
two  expressions,  they  would  be  these  :  First,  always 
make  sure  that  you  form  a  distinct  and  clear 
idea  of  the  matter  you  are  considering.  Sec 
ond,  always  avoid  vague  approximations  where 
exact  estimates  are  possible.  .  .  .  \ 

"  Yes,  as  I  say,  I  look  back  on  the  long  hours  of 
the  many  days  I  spent  in  the  wards  and  in 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  139 

the  autopsy  room  of  La  Pitie,  where  Louis  was 
one  of  the  attending  physicians  —  yes,  Louis 
did  a  great  work  for  practical  medicine.  Mod 
est  in  the  presence  of  nature,  fearless  in  the 
face  of  authority,  unwearying  in  the  pursuit  of 
truth,  he  was  a  man  whom  any  student  might 
be  happy  and  proud  to  claim  as  his  teacher 
and  his  friend.  And  yet,  as  I  look  back  on 
the  days  when  I  followed  his  teachings,  I  feel 
that  I  gave  myself  up  too  exclusively  to  his 
methods  of  thought  and  study.  There  is  one 
part  of  their  business  that  certain  medical  prac 
titioners  are  too  apt  to  forget ;  namely,  that 
what  they  should  most  of  all  try  to  do  is  to 
ward  off  disease,  to  alleviate  suffering,  to  pre 
serve  life,  or  at  least  to  prolong  it  if  possiWe. 
It  is  not  of  the  slightest  interest  to  the  patient 
to  know  whether  three  or  three  and  a  quarter 
inches  of  his  lungs  are  hepatized.  His  mind 
is  not  occupied  with  thinking  of  the  curious 
problems  which  are  to  be  solved  by  his  own 
autopsy,  whether  this  or  that  strand  of  the 
spinal  marrow  is  the  seat  of  this  or  that  form 
of  degeneration.  He  wants  something  to  re 
lieve  his  pain,  to  mitigate  the  anguish  of 
dyspnoea,  to  bring  back  motion  and  sensibility 


140  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

to  the  dead  limb,  to  still  the  tortures  of  neu 
ralgia.  What  is  it  to  him  that  you  can  local 
ize  and  name  by  some  uncouth  term,  the  dis 
ease  which  you  could  not  prevent  and  which 
you  can  not  cure  ?  an  old  woman  who  knows 
how  to  make  a  poultice  and  how  to  put  it 
on,  and  does  it  tuto,  cito,  jucunde,  just  when 
and  where  it  is  wanted,  is  better  —  a  thousand 
times  better  in  many  cases  —  than  a  staring 
pathologist  who  explores  and  thumps  and  doubts 
and  guesses  and  tells  his  patient  he  will  be 
better  to-morrow,  and  so  goes  home  to  tumble 
his  books  over  and  make  out  a  diagnosis. 

"But  in  those  days  I,  like  most  of  my  fellow  stu 
dents,  was  thinking  much  more  of  '  science '  than 
of  practical  medicine,  and  I  believe  if  we  had  not 
clung  so  closely  to  the  skirts  of  Louis,  and  had 
followed  some  of  the  courses  of  men  like  Rousseau, 

.   i 

—  therapeutists,  who  gave  special  attention  to 
curative  methods,  and  not  chiefly  to  diagnosis  —  it 
would  have  been  better  for  me  and  others.  One 
thing,  at  any  rate,  we  did  learn  in  the  wards  of 
Louis.  We  learned  that  a  very  large  proportion  of 
diseases  get  well  of  themselves,  without  any  special 
medication  —  the  great  fact  formulated,  enforced 
and  popularized  by  Doctor  Jacob  Bigelow." 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  HI 

It  is  well  known  that  Doctor  Holmes  detests  the 
habit  of  drugging  practised  by  so  many  physicians 
of  the  "  old  school,"  and  in  his  address  before  the 
Massachusetts  Medical  Society,  entitled  Currents 
and  Counter  Currents  in  Medical  Science,  he 
makes  a  severe  attack  upon  the  inordinate  use  of 
medicines. 

"  What  is  the  honest  truth,"  he  says  at  another 
time,  "  about  the  medical  art  ?  By  far  the  largest 
number  of  diseases  which  physicians  are  called  to 
treat  will  get  well  at  any  rate,  even  in  spite  of  rea 
sonably  bad  treatment.  Of  the  other  fraction,  a 
certain  number  will  inevitably  die,  whatever  is 
done :  there  remains  a  small  margin  of  cases  where 
the  life  of  the  patient  depends  on  the  skill  of  the 
physician  Drugs  now  and  then  save  life  ;  they 
often  shorten  disease  and  remove  symptoms  ;  but 
they  are  second  in  importance  to  food,  air,  tempera 
ture,  and  the  other  hygienic  influences.  That  was 
a  shrewd  trick  of  Alexander's  physician  on  the  occa 
sion  of  his  attack  after  bathing.  He  asked  three 
days  to  prepare  his  medicine.  Time  is  the  great 
physician  as  well  as  the  great  consoler.  Sensible 
men  in  all  ages  have  trusted  most  to  nature." 

Of  quacks  and  other  humbugs,  Doctor  Holmes 
has  an  undisguised,  wholesome  contempt. 


142  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"  Shall  we* try,"  he  says,  "the  medicines  adver 
tised  with  the  certificates  of  justices  of  the  peace,  of 
clergymen,  or  even  members  of  Congress  ?  Cer 
tainly,  it  may  be  answered,  any  one  of  them  which 
makes  sv  .;ood  case  for  itself.  But  the  difficulty  is, 
that  the  whole  class  of  commercial  remedies  are 
shown  by  .long  experience,  with  the  rarest  excep 
tions,  to  oe  very  sovereign  cures  for  empty  pockets, 
and  of  no  peculiar  efficacy  for  anything  else.  You 
may  be  well  assured  that  if  any  really  convincing 
evidence  was  brought  forward  in  behalf  of  the  most 
vulgar  nostrum,  the  chemists  would  go  at  once  to 
work  to  analyze  it,  the  physiologists  to  experiment 
with  it,  and  the  young  doctors  would  all  be  trying 
it  on  their  own  bodies,  if  not  on  their  patients.  But 
we  do  not  think  it  worth  while,  as  a  general  rule,  to 
send  a  Cheap  Jack's  gilt  chains  and  lockets  to  be 
tested  for  gold.  We  know  they  are  made  to  sell, 
and  so  with  the  pills  and  potions. 
Think  how  rapidly  any  real  discovery  is  appro 
priated  and  comes  into  universal  use.  Take  anaes 
thetics,  take  the  use  of  bromide  of  potassium,  and 
see  how  easily  they  obtained  acceptance.  If  you 
are  disposed  to  think  any  of  the  fancy  systems  has 
brought  forward  any  new  remedy  of  value  which 
the  medical  profession  has  been  slow  to  accept, 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  U3 

ask  any  fancy  practitioner  to  name  it.  Let  him 
name  one,  —  the  best  his  system  claims,  —  not 
a  hundred,  but  one.  A  single  new,  efficient, 
trustworthy  remedy  which  the  medical  profes 
sion  can  test  as  they  are  ready  test 
before  any  scientific  tribunal,  opium,  quinine, 
ether,  the  bromide  of  potassium.  There  is  no 
such  remedy  on  which  any  of  the  fancy  prac 
titioners  dare  stake  his  reputation.  If  there 
were,  it  would  long  ago  have  been  accepted, 
though  it  had  been  flowers  of  brimstone  from 
the  borders  of  Styx  or  Cocytus." 

Homoeopathy  is  classed  by  Doctor  Holmes  among 
such  "  Kindred  Delusions  "  as  the  Royal  Cure  for 
the  King's  Evil,  the  Weapon  Ointment,  the 
Sympathetic  Powder,  the  Tar-water  mania  of 
Bishop  Berkeley,  and  the  Metallic  Tractors,  or 
Perkinsism. 

In  making  a  direct  attack  upon  the  preten- 
tions  of  Homoeopathy,  Doctor  Holmes  declares 
at  the  outset  that  he  shall  treat  it  not  by 
ridicule,  but  by  argument ;  with  great  freedom, 
but  with  good  temper  and  in  peaceable  lan 
guage. 

Similia  similibus  curantur.  Like  cures  like, 
is  one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  Homoe- 


144  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

opathy,  and  "improbable  though  it  may  seem 
to  some,"  says  Doctor  Holmes  with  his  usual  im 
partial  fairness,  "there  is  no  essential  absurdity 
involved  in  the  proposition  that  diseases  yield 
to  remedies  capable  of  producing  like  symptoms. 
There  are,  on  the  other  hand,  some  analogies 
which  lend  a  degree  of  plausibility  to  the  state 
ment.  There  are  well-ascertained  facts,  known 
from  the  earliest  periods  of  medicine,  showing  that 
under  certain  circumstances,  the  very  medicine 
which  from  its  known  effects,  one  would  ex 
pect  to  aggravate  the  disease,  may  contribute 
to  its  relief.  I  may  be  permitted  to  allude, 
in  the  most  general  way,  to  the  case  in  which 
the  spontaneous  efforts  of  an  over-tasked  stom 
ach  are  quieted  by  the  agency  of  a  drug 
which  that  organ  refuses  to  entertain  upon  any 
terms.  But  that  every  cure  ever  performed  by 
medicine  should  have  been  founded  upon  this 
principle,  although  without  the  knowledge  of  a 
physician,  that  the  Homoeopathy  axiom  is,  as 
Hahnemann  asserts,  "  the  sole  law  of  nature  in 
therapeutics,"  a  law  of  which  nothing  more  than 
a  transient  glimpse  ever  presented  itself  to  the 
innumerable  host  of  medical  observers,  is  a  dog 
ma  of  such  sweeping  extent  and  pregnant  nov- 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  145 

elty,  that  it  demands  a  corresponding  breath 
and  depth  of  unquestionable  facts  to  cover  its 
vast  pretensions." 

Among  the  many  facts  of  which  great  use 
has  been  made  by  the  Homceopathists,  is  that 
found  in  the  precept  given  for  the  treatment 
of  parts  which  have  been  frozen,  by  friction 
with  snow,  etc. 

"  But,"  says  Doctor  Holmes,  "  we  deceive 
ourselves  by  names,  if  we  suppose  the  frozen 
part  to  be  treated  by  cold,  and  not  by  heat. 
The  snow  may  even  be  actually  warmer  than 
the  part  to  which  it  is  applied.  But  even  if  it 
were  at  the  same  temperature  when  applied, 
it  never  did  and  never  could  do  the  least  good 
to  a  frozen  part,  except  as  a  mode  of  regulat 
ing  the  application  of  what?  of  heat.  But  the 
heat  must  be  applied  gradually,  just  as  food 
must  be  given  a  little  at  a  time  to  those  per 
ishing  with  hunger.  If  the  patient  were 
brought  into  a  warm  room,  heat  would  be  ap 
plied  very  rapidly,  were  not  something  inter 
posed  to  prevent  this,  and  allow  its  gradual 
admission.  Snow  or  iced  water  is  exactly  what 
is  wanted ;  it  is  not  cold  to  the  part ;  it  is 
very  possibly  warm,  on  the  contrary,  for  these 


146  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

terms  are  relative,  and  if  it  does  not  melt  and 
let  the  heat  in,  or  is  not  taken  away,  the  part 
will  remain  frozen  up  until  doomsday.  Now 
the  treatment  of  a  frozen  limb  by  heat,  in 
large  or  small  quantities,  is  not  Homoeopathy." 
Another  supposed  illustration  of  the  Homoeo 
pathic  law  is  the  alleged  successful  management 
of  burns,  by  holding  them  to  the  fire.  "This 
is  a  popular  mode  of  treating  those  burns  which 
are  of  too  little  consequence  to  require  any 
more  efficacious  remedy,  and  would  inevitably 
get  well  of  themselves,  without  any  trouble 
being  bestowed  upon  them.  It  produces  a  most 
acute  pain  in  the  part,  which  is  followed  by 
some  loss  of  sensibility,  as  happens  with  the  eye 
after  exposure  to  strong  light,  and  the  ear 
after  being  subjected  to  very  intense  sounds. 
This  is  all  it  is  capable  of  doing,  and  all  fur 
ther  notions  of  its  efficacy  must  be  attributed 
merely  to  the  vulgar  love  of  paradox.  If  this 
example  affords  any  comfort  to  the  Homosopa- 
'hist,  it  seems  as  cruel  to  deprive  him  -of  it 
j«s  it  would  be  to  convince  the  mistress  of  the 
smoke-jack  or  the  rlatiron  that  the  fire  does 
not  literally  draw  the  fire  out,  which  is  her 
hypothesis. 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  147 

"  But  if  it  were  true  that  frost-bites  were 
cured  by  cold  and  burns  by  heat,  it  would  be 
subversive,  so  far  as  it  went,  of  the  great 
principle  of  Homoeopathy.  For  you  will  re 
member  that  this  principle  is  that  Like  cures 
Like,  and  not  that  Same  cures  Same;  that 
there  is  resemblance  and  not  identity  between 
the  symptoms  of  the  disease  and  those  pro 
duced  by  the  drug  which  cures  it,  and  none 
have  been  readier  to  insist  upon  this  distinc 
tion  than  the  Homoeopathists  themselves.  For 
if  Same  cures  Same,  then  every  poison  must 
be  its  own  antidote,  —  which  is  neither  a  part 
of  their  theory  nor  their  so-called  experience. 
They  have  been  asked  often  enough,  why  it 
was  that  arsenic  could  not  cure  the  mischief 
which  arsenic  had  caused,  and  why  the  infec 
tious  cause  of  small-pox  did  not  remedy  the 
disease  it  had  produced,  and  then  they  were 
ready  enough  to  see  the  distinction  I  have 
pointed  out.  "  O  no !  it  was  not  the  hair  of 
the  same  dog,  but  only  of  one  very  much  like 
him!" 

The  belief  in  and  employment  of  the  "In-' 
finitesimal  doses,"  Doctor  Holmes  handles  with 
the  same  fairness  and  acumen ;  but  the  absurd 


148  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

idea  affirmed  by  Hahnemann  that  Psora  is  the 
cause  of  the  great  majority  of  chronic  diseases, 
he  treats  as  it  deserves,  with  unqualified  con 
tempt. 

In  conclusion,  he  says,  "As  one  humble 
member  of  a  profession  which  for  more  than 
•two  thousand  years  has  devoted  itself  to  the 
pursuit  of  the  best  earthly  interests  of  man 
kind  always  assailed  and  insulted  from  without 
by  such  as  are  ignorant  of  its  infinite  per 
plexities  and  labors,  always  striving  in  unequal 
contest  with  the  hundred  armed  giants  who 
walk  in  the  noonday  and  sleep  not  in  the 
midnight,  yet  still  toiling  not  merely  for  itself 
and  the  present  moment,  but  for  the  race 
and  the  future,  I  have  lifted  up  my  voice 
against  this  lifeless  delusion,  rolling  its  shape 
less  bulk  into  the  path  of  a  noble  science  it 
is  too  weak  to  strike  or  to  injure." 

Upon  the  contagiousness  of  Puerperal  Fever, 
Doctor  Holmes  wrote  an  able  treatise  some 
forty  years  ago.  This  was  reprinted  with  some 
additions,  in  1855,  and  in  an  introductory  note 
which  accompanies  the  still  later  addition (1883), 
Doctor  Holmes  says,  "  The  subject  of  this  Paper 
has  the  same  profound  interest  for  me  at  the 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  149 

present  morrent  as  it  had  when  I  was  first 
collecting  the  terrible  evidence  out  of  which, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  the  commonest  exercise  of 
reason  could  not  help  shaping  the  truth  it 
involved.  It  is  not  merely  on  account  of  the 
bearing  of  the  question  —  if  there  is  a  ques 
tion —  on  all  that  is  most  sacred  in  human  life 

and   happiness    that    the   subject   cannot    lose   its 

\ 

interest.  It  is  because  it  seems  evident  that 
a  fair  statement  of  the  facts  must  produce 
its  proportion  of  well-constituted  and  unpreju 
diced  minds." 

The  essay,  a  most  valuable  one,  is  republished 
without  the  change  of  a  word  or  syllable,  as 
the  author  upon  reviewing  finds  that  it  antici 
pates  and  eliminates  those  secondary  questions 
which  cannot  be  for  a  moment  entertained 
until  the  one  great  point  of  fact  is  peremp 
torily  settled. 

There  are  but  very  few  subjects,  indeed,  in 
medical  science,  that  Doctor  Holmes  has  not 
investigated,  and  investigated,  too,  most  thor 
oughly.  .  . 

In  his  article  on  "  Reflex  Vision,"  published  in 
Volume  IV.  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  American 
Academy,  will  be  found  a  very  interesting  ac- 


150  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

count  of  his  experiments  in  optics.  One,  indeed, 
that  will  both  interest  and  instruct. 

To  him,  as  is  well  known,  we  are  indebted 
for  numerous  improvements  in  the  stereoscope ; 
and  in  microscopes  also,  he  has  done  some 
original  and  important  work. 

Said  an  admirer  of  Doctor  Holmes  in 
referring  to  his  career  as  a  medical  professor  : 

"  He  always  makes  people  attentive,  and  I 
have  been  told  that  there  is  no  professor  whom 
the  students  so  much  like  to  listen  to.  In  one 
of  his  books  he  says  that  every  one  of  us  is 
three  persons,  and  I  think  that  if  the  state 
ment  is  true  in  regard  to  ordinary  men  and 
/omen,  Doctor  Holmes  himself  is  at  least  half 
a\  dozen  persons.  He  lectures  so  well  on 
anatomy  that  his  students  never  suspect  him 
to  \be  a  poet,  and  he  writes  verses  so  well 
than  most  people  do  not  suspect  him  of  being 
an  authority  among  scientific  men.  Though  he 
illustrates  his  medical  lectures  by  quotations  of 
the  I  most  appropriate  and  interesting  sort,  from 
a  Wonderful  variety  of  authors,  he  has  never 
been  known  to  refer  to  his  own  writings  in 
that  way." 

In   celebrating   the   silver   anniversary  year  of 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE.  \§\ 

his  wedding  with  the  Muse  of  the  monthlies  — 
meaning  his  reappearance  in  the  Atlantic  —  he 
observed  that  during  the  larger  part  of  his 
absence,  his  time  had  been  in  a  great  meas 
ure  occupied  with  other  duties.  "  I  never  for 
got  the  advice  of  Coleridge,"  he  said,  "  that 
a  literary  man  should  have  a  regular  calling. 
I  may  say,  in  passing,  that  I  have  often  given 
the  advice  to  others,  and  too  often  wished  that 
I  could  supplement  it  with  the  words,  "And 
confine  himself  to  it.'" 


152  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE    HOLMES    BREAKFAST. 

AS  the  seventieth  birthday  of  Doctor 
Holmes  drew  near,  the  publishers  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  resolved  to  give  a  "Break 
fast"  in  his  honor.  The  twenty-ninth  of  August, 
1879,  was,  of  course,  the  true  anniversary,  but 
knowing  it  would  be  difficult  to  bring  together 
at  that  season  of  the  year  the  friends  and  lit 
erary  associates  of  Doctor  Holmes,  Mr.  Hough- 
ton  decided  to  postpone  the  invitations  until  the 
thirteenth  of  November.  Upon  that  day  a  bril 
liant  company  assembled  at  noon  in  the  spa 
cious  parlors  of  the  Hotel  Brunswick,  in  Bos 
ton. 

Doctor  Holmes  and  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Sar 
gent,  received  the  guests,  who  numbered  in  all 
about  one  hundred.  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  and  John  G.  Whittier  assisted  in  this 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  153 

ceremony,  and  after  a  couple  of  hours  spent  in 
sparkling  converse,  the  company  adjourned  to 
the  dining-room,  where  a  sumptuous  "  Break 
fast"  was  served  to  the  "Autocrat"  and  his 
friends. 

At  the  six  tables  were  seated  writers  of 
eminence  in  every  department  of  literature. 
Grace  was  said  by  the  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks, 
D.  D.,  and  after  the  cloth  was  removed,  Mr. 
H.  O.  Houghton  introduced  the  guest  of  the 
day  in  a  few  happily-chosen  words. 

The  company  then  rose  and  drank  the  health 
of  the  poet,  after  which  Doctor  Holmes  read 
the  following  beautiful  poem  : 

THE   IRON    GATE. 

Where   is  the  patriarch  you  are  kindly  greeting? 

Not  unfamiliar  to   my  ear   his   name, 
Not  yet   unknown   to  many  a  joyous   meeting 

In   days  long  vanished, —  is    he   still   the   same, 

Or  changed  by  years  forgotten  and  forgetting, 

Dull-eared,  dim-sighted,  slow  of  speech  and  thought, 

Still  o'er  the  sad,  degenerate  present  fretting, 
Where  all  goes  wrong  and  nothing  as  it  ought  ? 

Old  age,   the  gray-beard !     Well,   indeed,   I   know   him,— 
Shrunk,  tottering,   bent,   of   aches  and   ills  the   prey ; 


154  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

In  sermon,   story,   fable,   picture,   poem, 
Oft   have   I   met  him   from   my  earliest   day. 

In  my   old   ./Esop,    toiling   with  his   bundle, — 
His  load   of  sticks, —  politely  asking  Death, 

Who   comes  when  called  for, —  would  he   lug  or  trundle 
His  fagot  for   him  ?  —  he   was   scant  of  breath. 

And  sad   "  Ecclesiastes,   or  the   Preacher," 

Has  he   not  stamped   the   image   on    my  soul, 

In  that  last   chapter,   where   the   worn-out  Teacher 
Sighs   o'er   the  loosened   cord,   the  broken  bowl? 

Yes,   long,   indeed,   I've  known   him   at   a  distance, 
And  now  my   lifted    door-latch   shows    him  here ; 

I   take   his  shrivelled   hand   without   resistance, 
And  find  him   smiling  as   his  step   draws   near. 

What  though   of  gilded   baubles  he  bereaves   us, 
Dear  to  the   heart    of  youth,  to  manhood's  prime, 

Think  of  the   calm   he   brings,   the  wealth  he   leaves  us, 
The  hoarded  spoils,    the  legacies   of  time ! 

Altars   once  flaming,   still   with  incense  fragrant, 

Passion's   uneasy  nurslings  rocked   asleep, 
Hope's  anchor  faster,   wild  desire   less  vagrant, 

Life's  flow  less   noisy,   but  the   stream    h  ow  deep  I 

Still   as   the   silver   cord  gets   worn   and   slender, 
Its   lightened   task-work  tugs  with  lessening   strain, 

Hands  get  more   helpful,   voices  grown   more   tender, 
Soothe  with   their  softened  tones   the   slumberous  brain. 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  15f 

Youth   longs   and   manhood  strives,  but   age   remembers, 

Sits  by  the  raked-up   ashes   of   the   past, 
Spreads  its   thin   hands   above   the   whitening  embers 

That   warm   its   creeping  life-blood  till   the   last. 

Dear  to  its  heart   is   every  loving  token 

That   comes  unbidden   ere   its  -pulse  grows  cold, 

Ere   the   last   lingering  ties   of  life  are   broken, 
Its   labors  ended,   and   its  story  told. 

Ah,  while  around   us   rosy  youth   rejoices, 

For  us    the   sorrow-laden   breezes  sigh, 
And  through   the   chorus   of  its  jocund  voices 

Throbs   the  -sharp  note   of  misery's   hopeless  cry. 

As  on  the   gauzy  wings  of  fancy  flying 
From  some   far   orb   I  track   our  watery   sphere, 

Home   of   the  struggling,   suffering,   doubting,    dying, 
The  silvered  globule   seems  a  glistening   tear. 

But   Nature  lends   her   mirror  of   illusion 

To  win  from  saddening  scenes   our  age-dimmed   eyes, 
And   misty  day-dreams   blend   in  sweet    confusion 

The  wintery  landscape   and  the   summer  skies. 

So  when  the  iron   portal   shuts  behind   us, 
And   life  forgets    us    in  its   noise    and  whirl, 

Visions   that   shunned   the   glaring   noonday   find   us, 
And  glimmering   starlight   shows   the  gates   of  pearl. 

I  come   not  here   your  morning   hour  to   sadden 
A  limping   pilgrim   leaning  on   his   staff, — 


156  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

I,  who  have   never   deemed   it   sin  to   gladden 
This  vale  of  sorrows  with  a  wholesome  laugh. 

If  word   of   mine  another's   gloom   has   brightened, 
Through  my  dumb  lips  the  heaven-sent  message  came; 

If  hand   of  mine   another's  task   has   lightened, 
It  felt  the  guidance  that   it  dares   not  claim. 

But,   O   my   gentle   sisters,   O   my  brothers, 

These   thick-sown   snow-flakes   hint  of  toil's  release ; 

These  feebler  pulses  bid   me  leave   to   others 

The   tasks   once   welcome;   evening  asks  for   peace. 

Time   claims  his   tribute  ;    silence   now   is  golden ; 

Let  me   not  vex  the  too   long   suffering   lyre ; 
Though  to  your   love   untiring   still   beholden, 

The   curfew   tells   me — cover  up   the  fire. 

And   now  with  grateful  smile   and   accents  cheerful, 
And  warmer  heart   than   look   or  word  can   tell, 

In  simplest  phrase  —  these  traitorous   eyes   are   tearful  — 
Thanks,  Brothers,   Sisters, —  Children,   and  farewell! 

After  the  reading  of  the  poem,  the  follow 
ing  reminiscence  from  Doctor  Holmes'  pen,  was 
read  by  Mr.  Hough  ton  :  — 

"The  establishment  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
was  due  to  the  liberal  enterprise  of  the  then 
flourishing  firm  of  Phillips  &  Sampson.  Mr. 
Phillips,  more  especially,  was  most  active  and 
sanguine.  The  publishers  were  fortunate  enough 


THE  HOLMES  UREAKFAST.  157 

to  secure  the  services  of  Mr.  Lowell  as  editor. 
Mr.  Lowell  had  a  fancy  that  I  could  be  use 
ful  as  a  contributor,  and  woke  me  from  a  kind 
of  literary  lethargy  in  which  I  was  half  slum 
bering,  to  call  me  to  active  service.  Remem 
bering  some  crude  contributions  of  mine  to  an 
old  magazine,  it  occurred  to  me  that  their  title 
might  serve  for  some  fresh  papers,  and  so  I 
sat  down  and  wrote  off  what  came  into  my 
head  under  the  title  The  Autocrat  of  the  Break 
fast-Table.  This  series  of  papers  was  not  the 
result  of  an  express  premeditation,  but  was,  as 
I  may  say,  dipped  from  the  running  stream  of 
my  thoughts.  Its  very  kind  reception  encour 
aged  me,  and  you  know  the  consequences, 
which  have  lasted  from  that  day  to  this. 

"But  what  I  want  especially  to  say  here  is, 
that  I  owe  the  impulse  which  started  my  second 
growth,  to  the  urgent  hint  of  my  friend  Mr. 
Lowell,  and  that  you  have  him  to  thank,  not 
only  for  his  own  noble  contributions  to  our 
literature,  but  for  the  spur  which  moved  me 
to  action,  to  which  you  owe  any  pleasure  I 
may  have  given,  and  I  am  indebted  for  the 
crowning  happiness  of  this  occasion.  His 
absence  I  most  deeply  regret  for  your  and  my 


158  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

own  sake,  while  I  congratulate  the  country  to 
which  in  his  eminent  station  he  is  devoting 
his  services." 

As  Mr.  Whittier  had  been  obliged  to  leave 
the  company  before  this,  Mr.  James  T.  Fields 
read  his  fine  poem  entitled  "  Our  Autocrat," 
from  which  we  quote  the  last  verses : 

What  shapes   and   fancies,  grave   or  gay, 

Before   us   at  his   bidding   come ! 
The   Treadmill    tramp,   the  "  One  Hoss   Shay," 

The  dumb  despair   of   Elsie's   doom! 

The   tale   of  Aris   and   the   Maid, 

-The   plea  for   lips  that  cannot  speak, 
The   holy  kiss   that   Iris   laid 

On   Little   Boston's   pallid    cheek ! 

Long  may  he  live  to  sing  for  us 
His  sweetest  songs  at  evening  time, 

And  like  his  Chambered  Nautilus 
To  holier  heights  of  beauty  climb  I 

Though  now   unnumbered  guests  surround 

The   table  that  he   rules  at  will, 
Its   Autocrat,  however   crowned, 

Is  but  our  friend   and  comrade  still. 

The  world   may   keep   his   honored  name, 
The  wealth  of  all  his  varied   powers ; 

A  stronger   claim   has  love   than  fame 
And  he  himself  is  only  ours  1 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  159 

Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  then  took  the  chair  and 
was  introduced  to  the  company  as  the  repre 
sentative  of  the  "  mythical  editor." 

In  his  remarks,  Mr.  Howells  paid  the  fol 
lowing  tribute  to  the  Autocrat : 

"  The  fact  is  known  to  you  all,  and  I  will 
not  insist  upon  it,  but  it  was  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  who  not  only  named,  but  who  made 
the  Atlantic.  How  did  he  do  this  ?  Oh,  very 
simply!  He  merely  invented  a  new  kind  of 
literature,  something  so  beautiful  and  rare  and 
fine  that  while  you  were  trying  to  determine 
its  character  as  monologue  or  colloquy,  prose 
or  poetry,  philosophy  or  humor,  it  was  grad 
ually  penetrating  your  consciousness  with  a 
sense  that  the  best  of  all  these  had  been  fused. 
in  one  —  a  perfect  form,  an  exquisite  wisdom, 
an  unsurpassable  grace.  This,  and  much  more 
than  any  poor  words  of  mine  can  say,  was 
the  Autocrat,  followed  by  the  Professor,  and 
then  by  the  Poet,  at  the  same  Breakfast-Table. 
We  pledge  him  by  all  these  names  to-day, 
not  only  with  the  wine  in  our  cups,  but  with 
the  pride  and  love  in  our  hearts,  where  we 
have  enshrined  him  immortally  young,  in  spite 
of  the  birthdays  that  come  and  go,. and  where 


160  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

we  defy  the  future  that  lies  in  wait  for  our 
precious  things,  to  know  his  quality  better,  or 
value  his  genius  more  highly  than  we." 

Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe  was  then  called  upon 
to  respond  to  the  toast,  "  The  girls  we  have 
not  left  behind  us,"  and  after  a  few  words  in 
reply,  she  read  a  fine  poem  in  honor  of  the 
illustrious  guest. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  was  then  introduced, 
and  after  a  short  speech,  read  a  poem  by  H. 
H.,  "To  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  on  his  seventieth 
birthday."  In  these  charming  lines  almost  every 
poem  of  Doctor  Holmes  is  mentioned  with  rare 
tact  and  skill. 

At  the  close  of  the  poem,  President  Eliot  of 
Harvard,  rose  and  said : 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  my  duty  to 
remind  all  these  poets,  essayists  and  story-tellers 
who  are  gathered  here,  that  the  main  work  of 
our  friend's  life  has  been  of  an  altogether  dif 
ferent  nature.  I  know  him  as  the  professor  of 
anatomy  and  physiology  in  the  Medical  School 
of  Harvard  University  for  the  last  thirty-two 
years,  and  I  know  him  to-day  as  one  of  the 
most  active  and  hard-working  of  our  lecturers. 
Some  of  you  gentlemen,  I  observe,  are  lecturers 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  161 

by  profession,  at  least  during  the  winter  months. 
Doctor  Holmes  delivers  four  lectures  every 
week  for  eight  months  of  the  year.  I  am  sure 
the  lecturers  by  profession  will  understand  that 
this  task  requires  an  extraordinary  amount  of 
mental  and  physical  vigor.  And  I  congratulate 
our  friend  on  the  weekly  demonstration  /of  that 
vigor  which  he  gives  in  our  medical  school. 
Most  of  you  have  perhaps  the  impression  that 
Doctor  Holmes  chiefly  enjoys  a  pretty  couplet, 
a  beautiful  verse,  an  elegant  sentence.  It  has 

fallen    to    me    to    observe    that    he    has    other 

if 

great  enjoyments.  I  never  heard  any  other/ 
mortal  exhibit  such  enthusiasm  over  an  elegant/ 
dissection.  And  perhaps  you  think  it  is  the 
pen  with  which  Doctor  Holmes  is  chiefly 
skilful.  I  assure  you  that  he  is  equally  skilful 
with  scalpel  and  with  microscope.  And  I  think 
that  none  of  us  can  understand  the  meaning 
and  scope  of  Doctor  Holmes',  writing,  unless 
we  have  observed  that  the  daily  work  of  his 
life  has  been  to  study  and  teach  a  natural 
science,  the  noble  science  of  anatomy.  It  is 
his  to  know  with  absolute  exactness  the  form 
of  every  bone  in  this  wonderful  body  of  ours, 
the  course  of  every  artery,  and  vein,  and  nerve, 


162  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  form  and  function  of  every  muscle ,  and 
not  only  to  know  it,  but  to  describe  it  with 
a  fascinating  precision  and  enthusiasm.  When 
I  read  his  writings  I  find  the  traces  of  this 
life-work  of  his  on  every  page.  There  are 
three  thousand  men  scattered  through  New 
England  at  this  moment  who  will  remember 
Doctor  Holmes  through  their  lives,  and  transmit 
to  their  children  the  memory  of  him,  as  student 
and  teacher  of  exact  science.  And  let  us  honor* 
him  to-day,  not  forgetting  —  they  can  never  be 
forgotten — his  poems  and  essays,  as  a  noble 
representative  of  the  profession  of  the  scientific 
student  and  teacher." 

Mr.  S.  L.  Clemens  ( Mark  Twain )  followed 
President  Eliot. 

"  I  would  have  travelled,"  he  began,  "  a  much 
greater  distance  than  I  have  come  to  witness 
the  paying  of  honors  to  Doctor  Holmes,  for 
my  feeling  toward  him  has  always  been  one 
of  peculiar  warmth.  When  one  receives  a  let 
ter  from  a  great  man  for  the  first  time  in 
his  life,  it  is  a  large  event  to  him,  as  all  of 
you  know  by  your  own  experience.  Well,  the 
first  great  man  who  ever  wrote  me  a  letter 
was  our  guest — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  He 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  163 

was  also  the  first  great  literary  man  I  ever 
stole  anything  from,  and  that  is  how  I  came 
to  write  to  him  and  he  to  me.  When  my 
first  book  was  new,  a  friend  of  mine  said, 
'  The  dedication  is  very  neat.'  '  Yes,'  I  said,  '  I 
thought  it  was.'  My  friend  said,  '  I  always  ad 
mired  it  even  before  I  saw  it  in  The  Innocents 
Abroad'  I  naturally  said,  '  What  do  you 
mean  ?  Where  did  you  ever  see  it  before  ? ' 
'  Well,  I  saw  it  some  years  ago,  as  Doctor 
Holmes'  dedication  to  his  Songs  in  Many  Keys' 
Of  course  my  first  impulse  was  to  prepare 
this  man's  remains  for  burial,  but  upon  reflec 
tion  I  said  I  would  reprieve  him  for  a  mo 
ment  or  two  and  give  him  a  chance  to  prove 
his  assertion  if  he  could.  We  stepped  into  a 
bookstore  and  he  did  prove  it.  I  had  really 
stolen  that  dedication  almost  word  for  word. 
I  could  not  imagine  how  this  curious  thing 
happened,  for  I  knew  one  thing  for  a  dead 
certainty — that  a  certain  amount  of  pride 
always  goes  along  with  a  teaspoonful  of  brains, 
and  that  this  pride  protects  a  man  from 
deliberately  stealing  other  people's  ideas.  That 
is  what  a  teaspoonful  of  brains  will  do  for  a 
man,  and  admirers  had  often  told  me  I  had 


164  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

nearly  a  basketful,  though  they  were  rather 
reserved  as  to  the  size  of  the  basket.  How 
ever,  I  thought  the  thing  out  and  solved  the 
mystery.  Two  years  before  I  had  been  laid  up 
a  couple  of  weeks  in  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
and  had  read  and  re-read  Doctor  Holmes's 
poems  till  my  mental  reservoir  was  filled  with 
them  to  the  brim.  The  dedication  lay  on  top 
and  handy,  so  by  and  by  I  unconsciously 
stole  it.  Perhaps  I  unconsciously  stole  the 
rest  of  the  volume,  too,  for  many  people  have 
told  me  that  my  book  was  pretty  poetical  in 
one  way  or  another.  Well,  of  course  I  wrote 
Doctor  Holmes  and  told  him  I  hadn't  meant 
to  steal,  and  he  wrote  back  and  said  in  the 
kindest  way  that  it  was  all  right  and  no 
harm  done  ;  and  added  that  he  believed  we 
all  unconsciously  worked  over  ideas  gathered  in 
reading  and  hearing,  imagining  they  were 
original  with  ourselves.  He  stated  a  truth 
and  did  it  in  such  a  pleasant  way,  and  salved 
over  my  sore  spot  so  gently  and  so  healir\gly 
that  I  was  rather  glad  I  had  committed  the 
crime,  for  the  sake  of  the  letter.  I  afterward 
called  on  him  and  told  him  to  make  perfectly 
free  with  any  ideas  of  mine  that  struck  him 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  105 

as  being  good  protoplasm  for  poetry.  He 
could  see  by  that  that  there  wasn't  anything 
mean  about  me ;  so  we  got  along  right  from 
the  start. 

"  I  have  met  Doctor  Holmes  many  times 
since;  and  lately  he  said — however,  I  am 
wandering  away  from  the  one  thing  which  I 
got  on  my  feet  to  do,  that  is,  to  make  my 
compliments  to  you,  my  fellow-teachers  of  the 
great  public,  and  likewise  to  say  I  am  right 
glad  to  see  that  Doctor  Holmes  is  still  in 
his  prime  and  full  of  generous  life  ;  and  as 
age  is  not  determined  by  years,  but  by  trouble 
and  by  infirmities  of  mind  and  body,  I  hope  it 
may  be  a  very  long  time  yet  before  any  one 
can  truthfully  say,  '  He  is  growing  old.' " 

Mr.  Howelis  then  introduced  Mr.  J.  W. 
Harper  of  New  York,  who  gave  in  his  re 
marks  a  delightful  pen  portrait  of  Doctor 
Holmes,  the  lyceum  lecturer,  which  we  have 
elsewhere  quoted.  Mr.  E.  C.  Stedman  followed 
Mr.  Harper  with  a  brief  speech  and  graceful 
poem.  Mr.  T.  B  Alclrich  spoke  of  the  "  inex 
haustible  kindness  of  Doctor  Holmes  to  his 
younger  brothers  in  literature,"  and  Mr.  Wil 
liam  Winter  paid  his  tribute  to  the  honored 


166  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

guest    by   "  The    Chieftain,"    a    poem    which    he 
named  for  the  occasion  Hearts  and  Holmes. 

Mr.  J.  T.  Trowbridge  then  read  a  poem  entitled 
"  Filling  an  Order,"  in  which  Nature  compounds 
for  Miss  Columbia  "three  geniuses  A  i.,"  to 
grace  her  favorite  city.  She  concludes  her  mix 
ture  as  follows  : 

Says    she,   "  The    fault    I'm    well    aware,    with    genius    is    the 

presence 

Of  altogether  too   much  clay  with  quite   too   little   essence, 
And  sluggish   atoms  that   obstruct  the   spiritual   solution ; 
So  now   instead   of    spoiling   these   by  over-much   dilution 
With  their   fine    elements    I'll    make    a    single    rare    phenom 
enon, 
And   of    three   common  geniuses    concoct    a   most    uncommon 

one, 

So  that   the   world   shall   smile   to   see  a  soul   so  universal, 
Such   poesy  and  pleasantry,   packed   in   so   small   a   parcel. 

So   said,  so  done ;   the   three  in  one   she   wrapped,  and  stuck 

the   label 
Poet,   Professor,   Autocrat  of  Wit's  cwn   Breakfast- Table." 

C.  P.  Cranch  then  read  a  fine  sonnet,  and  Col 
onel  T.  W.  Higginson  followed  with  felicitous 
remarks,  a  portion  of  which  referring  to  the 
father  of  Doctor  Holmes  we  have  quoted  else 
where  in  the  book. 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  167 

Letters  of  regrets  were  then  read  from  R. 
B.  Hayes,  John  Holmes,  the  poet's  brother, 
George  William  Curtis  and  George  Bancroft. 

Among  others  unable  to  be  present,  but  who 
sent  regrets,  were  Rebecca  Harding  Davis, 
Carl  Schurz,  Edwin  P.  Whipple,  Noah  Porter, 
George  Ripley,  Henry  Watterson,  George  H. 
Boker,  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett,  L.  Maria 
Child,  Gail  Hamilton,  Parke  Godwin,  Donald 
G.  Mitchell,  John  J.  Piatt,  Richard  Grant 
White,  D.  C.  Gilman,  J.  W.  DeForest,  Frederick 
Douglass,  J.  G.  Holland,  George  W.  Childs,  John 
Hay  and  W.  W.  Story. 

Mr.  James  T.  Fields  was  obliged  to  fulfil  a  lec 
ture  engagement  soon  after  the  speaking  began, 
else  he  would  have  read  the  following  fairy 
tale :  — 

Once  upon  a  time  a  company  of  good-natured 
fairies  assembled  for  a  summer  moonlight  dance 
on  a  green  lawn  in  front  of  a  certain  pictur 
esque  old  house  in  Cambridge.  They  had 
come  out  for  a  midnight  lark,  and  as  their 
twinkling  feet  flew  about  among  the  musical 
dewdrops  they  were  suddenly  interrupted  by  the 
well-known  figure  of  the  village  doctor,  which, 


108  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

emerging  from  the  old  mansion,  rapidly  made 
its  way  homeward. 

"  Another  new  mortal  has  alighted  on  our  happy 
planet,"  whispered  a  fairy  gossip  to  her  near 
companion. 

"  Evidently  so,"  replied  the  tiny  creature,  smil 
ing  good-naturedly  on  the  doctor's  footprints  in 
the  grass. 

"  That  is  the  minister's  house,"  said  another 
small  personage,  with  a  wink  of  satisfaction. 

"  Perhaps  it  is  a  boy,"  ejaculated  Fairy  Num 
ber  One. 

"I  know  it  is  a  boy!"  said  Fairy  Number 
Two.  I  read  it  in  the  Doctor's  face  when  the 
moon  lighted  up  his  countenance  as  he  shut 
the  door  so  softly  behind  him. 

"  It  is  a  boy ! "  responded  the  Fairy  Queen, 
who  always  knew  everything,"  and  that  settled 
the  question. 

"  If  that  is  the  case,"  cried  all  the  fairies  at 
once,  "let  us  try  what  magic  still  remains  to  us 
in  this  busy,  bustling  New  England.  Let  us 
make  that  child's  life  a  happy  and  a  famous 
one  if  we  can." 

"  Agreed,"  replied  the  queen ;  "  and  I  will 
lead  off  with  a  substantial  gift  to  the  little 


THE  HOLMES  BREAKFAST.  169 

new-comer.  I  will  crown  him  with  Cheerfulness, 
a  sunny  temperament,  brimming  over  with  mirth 
and  happiness." 

"  And  I  will  second  your  Majesty's  gift  to  the 
little  man,"  said  a  sweet-voiced  creature,  "and 
tender  him  the  ever-abiding  gift  of  Song.  He 
shall  be  a  perpetual  minstrel  to  gladden  the 
hearts  of  all  his  fellow-mortals." 

"And  I,"  said  another,  "will  shower  upon  him 
the  subtle  power  of  Pathos  and  Romance,  and 
he  shall  take  unto  himself  the  spell  of  a  sor 
cerer  whenever  he  chooses  to  scatter  abroad 
his  wise  and  beautiful  fancies." 

"  And  I,"  said  a  very  astute-looking  fairy, 
"  will  touch  his  lips  with  Persuasion ;  he  shall 
he  a  teacher  of  knowledge,  and  the*  divine  gift 
of  eloquence  shall  be  at  his  command,  to  ur> 
lift  and  instruct  the  people." 

"And  I,"  said  a  quaint,  energetic  little  body, 
"  will  endow  him  with  a  passionate  desire  to 
help  forward  the  less  favored  sons  and  daugh 
ters  of  earth,  who  are  struggling  for  recognition 
and  success  in  their  various  avocations." 

"And  I,"  said  a  motherly-looking,  amiable 
fairy,  "  will  see  that  in  due  time  he  finds  the  best 
among  women  for  his  companionship,  a  helpmeet 


170  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

indeed,  whose  life  shall  be  happily  bound  up  in 
his  life." 

"  Do  give  me  a  chance,"  cried  a  beautiful 
young  fairy  "  and  I  will  answer  for  his  chil 
dren,  that  they  may  be  worthy  of  their  father, 
and  all  a  mother's  heart  may  pray  that  Heaven 
will  vouchsafe  to  her." 

And  after  seventy  years  have  rolled  away 
into  space,  the  same  fairies  assembled  on  the 
same  lawn  at  the  same  season  of  the  year,  to 
compare  notes  with  reference  to  their  now  fa 
mous  prottgt.  And  they  declared  that  their  magic 
had  been  thoroughly  successful,  and  that  their 
charms  had  all  worked  without  a  single  flaw. 

Then  they  took  hands,  and  dancing  slowly 
around  the  time-honored  mansion,  sang  this 
roundelay,  framed  in  the  words  of  their  own 
beloved  poet :  — 

Strength   to   his  hours  of  manly   toil  I 

Peace  to   his  star-lit  dreams ! 
He  loves   alike  the  furrowed   soil, 

The  music-haunted  streams  I 

Sweet  smiles  to   keep  forever  bright 

The   sunshine  on   his  lip's, 
And  faith   that   sees   the   ring   of  light 

Round   Nature's  last   eclipse  I 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  171 


CHAPTER  XV. 

ORATIONS     AND    ESSAYS. 

IN  Pages  from  an  old  Volume  of  Life, 
one  of  the  latest  books  published  by  Doctor 
Holmes,  we  have  a  collection  of  most  delight 
ful  orations  and  essays.  Some  of  them  we 
recognize  as  old,  familiar  friends.  "  Bread  and 
the  Newspaper,"  for  instance,  recalls  vividly 
those  sad,  terribly  earnest  days  when  the  civil 
war  was  rending  not  only  our  land  but  our 
hearts.  Something  to  eat,  and  the  daily  papers 
to  read  —  these  we  must  have,  no  matter  what 
else  we  had  to  give  up ! 

War  taught  us,  as  nothing  else  could,  what 
we  really  were.  It  exalted  our  manhood  and 
our  womanhood,  and  showed  us  our  substantial 
human  qualities  for  a  long  time  kept  out  of 
sight,  it  may  be,  by  the  spirit  of  commerce, 
the  love  of  art,  science,  or  literature.  Those 
who  had  called  Doctor  Holmes  "  an  aristocrat," 


172  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

"  a  Tory,"  forgot  all  their  bitter  feelings  when 
he  said,  "We  are  finding  out  that  not  only 
'  patriotism  is  eloquence,'  but  that  heroism  is 
gentility.  All  ranks  are  wonderfully  equalized 
under  the  fire  of  a  masked  battery.  The  plain 
artisan,  or  the  rough  fireman,  who  faces  the 
lead  and  iron  like  a  man,  is  the  truest  repre 
sentative  we  can  show  of  the  heroes  of  Crecy 
and  Agincourt.  And  if  one  of  our  fine  gentle 
men  puts  off  his  straw-colored  kids  and  stands 
by  the  other,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  or  leads 
him  on  to  the  attack,  he  is  as  honorable  in 
our  eyes  and  in  theirs  as  if  he  were  ill-dressed 
and  his  hands  were  soiled  with  labor. 

In  The  Inevitable  Ttial,  an  oration  deliv 
ered  on  the  4th  of  July,  1863,  before  the 
City  Authorities  of  Boston,  Doctor  Holmes 
who  had  been  falsely  classed  among  the  ene 
mies  of  the  Anti-slavery  movement,  spoke  as 
follows :  — 

"  Long  before  the  accents  of  our  famous 
statesmen  resounded  in  the  halls  of  the  Capi 
tol,  long  before  the  Liberator  opened  its  bat 
teries,  the  controversy  now  working  itself  out 
by  trial  of  battle  was  foreseen  and  predicted. 
Washington  warned  his  countrymen  of  the  dan- 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  173 

ger  of  sectional  divisions,  well  knowing  the  line 
of  clearage  that  ran  through  the  seemingly 
solid  fabric.  Jefferson  foreshadowed  the  judg 
ment  to  fall  upon  the  land  for  its  sins  against 
a  just  God.  Andrew  Jackson  announced  a 
quarter  of  a  century  beforehand  that  the  next 
pretext  of  revolution  would,  be  slavery.  De 
Tocqueville  recognized  with  that  penetrating  in 
sight  which  anal}  zed  our  institutions  and  con 
ditions  so  keenly,  that  the  Union  was  to  be 
endangered  by  slavery  not  through  its  interests, 
but  through  the  change  of  character  it  was 
bringing  about  in  the  people  of  the  two  sec 
tions,  the  same  fatal  change  which  George 
Mason,  more  than  half  a  century  before,  had 
declared  to  be  the  most  pernicious  effect  of  the 
system,  adding  the  solemn  warning,  now  fear 
fully  justifying  itself  in  the  sight  of  his  de 
scendants,  that  '  by  an  inevitable  chain  of  causes 
and  effects,  Providence  punishes  national  sins  by 
national  calamities.' 

"  The  Virginian  romancer  pictured  the  far-off 
scenes  of  the  conflict  which  he  saw  approaching 
as  the  prophets  of  Israel  painted  the  coming 
woes  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  strong  iconoclast  of 
Boston  announced  the  very  year  when  the  cur- 


174  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

tain    should   rise    on    the    yet    unopened    drama. 

"  The  wise  men  of  the  past,  and  the  shrewd 
men  of  our  own  time,  who  warned  us  of  the 
calamities  in  store  for  our  nation,  never  doubted 
what  was  the  cause  which  was  to  produce  first 
alienation  and  finally  rupture.  The  descendants 
of  the  men,  '  daily  exercised  in  tyranny,'  the 
'  petty  tyrants/  as  their  own  leading  states 
men  called  them  long  ago,  came  at  length  to 
love  the  institution  which  their  fathers  had 
condemned  while  they  tolerated.  It  is  the  fear 
ful  realization  of  that  vision  of  the  poet  where 
the  lost  angels  snuff  up  with  eager  nostrils 
the  sulphurous  emanations  of  the  bottomless 
abyss,  —  so  have  their  natures  become  changed 
by  long  breathing  the  atmosphere  of  the  realm 
of  darkness." 

In  this  same  grand  oration  occur  also  these 
eloquent  words : — 

"  Whether  we  know  it  or  not,  whether  we 
mean  it  or  not,  we  cannot  help  fighting  against 
the  system  that  has  proved  the  source  of  all 
those  miseries  which  the  author  of  the  Declar 
ation  of  Independence  trembled  to  anticipate. 
And  this  ought  to  make  us  willing  to  do  and 
to  suffer  cheerfully.  There  were  Holy  Wars  of 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  175 

old,  in  which  it  was  glory  enough  to  die;  wars 
in  which  the  one  aim  was  to  rescue  the  sep 
ulchre  of  Christ  from  the  hands  of  infidels. 
The  sepulchre  of  Christ  is  not  in  Palestine! 
He  rose  from  that  burial-place  more  than  eight 
een  hundred  years  ago.  He  is  crucified  wher 
ever  his  brothers  are  slain  without  cause ;  he 
lies  buried  wherever  man,  made  in  his  Maker's 
image,  is  entombed  in  ignorance  lest  he  should 
learn  the  rights  which  his  Divine  Master  gave 
him!  This  is  our  Holy  War,  and  we  must 
bring  to  it  all  the  power  with  which  he  fought 
against  the  Almighty  before  he  was  cast  from 
heaven." 

In  his  Hunt  after  the  Captain,  we  realize 
how  near  the  "dull  dead  ghastliness  of  War" 
came  to  the  fond  father's  heart  as  he  sought 
his  wounded  hero  through  those  dreary  hospi 
tal  wards  !  He  knew  of  what  he  spake  when  ap 
pealing  so  eloquently  to  his  fellow-patriots :  — 

"  Sons  and  daughters  of  New  England,  men 
and  women  of  the  North,  brothers  and  sisters 
in  the  bond  of  the  American  Union,  you  have 
among  you  the  scarred  and  wasted  soldiers 
who  have  shed  their  blood  for  your  temporal 
salvation.  They  bore  your  nation's  emblems 


176  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

bravely  through  the  fire  and  smoke  of  the  bat 
tle-field  ;  nay,  their  own  bodies  are  starred  with 
bullet-wounds  and  striped  with  sabre-cuts,  as 
if  to  mark  them  as  belonging  to  their  country 
until  their  dust  becomes  a  portion  of  the  soil 
which  they  defended.  In  every  Northern  grave 
yard  slumber  the  victims  of  this  destroying 
struggle.  Many  whom  you  remember  playing 
as  children  amidst  the  clover  blossoms  of  our 
Northern  fields,  sleep  under  nameless  mounds 
with  strange  Southern  wild  flowers  blooming 
over  them.  By  those  wounds  of  living  heroes, 
by  those  graves  of  fallen  martyrs,  by  the  hopes 
of  your  children,  and  the  claims  of  your  chil 
dren's  children  yet  unborn,  in  the  name  of 
outraged  honor,  in  the  interest  of  violated  sov 
ereignty,  for  the  life  of  an  imperilled  nation, 
for  the  sake  of  men  everywhere,  and  of  our 
common  humanity,  for  the  glory  of  God  and 
the  advancement  of  his  kingdom  on  earth,  your 
country  calls  upon  you  to  stand  by  her  through 
good  report  and  through  evil  report,  in  triumph 
and  in  defeat,  until  she  emerges  from  the  great 
war  of  Western  civilization,  Queen  of  the  broad 
continent,  Arbitress  in  the  councils  of  earth's 
emancipated  peoples." 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  177 

It  will  be  remembered  that  this  heart-stirring 
oration,  The  Inevitable  Trial,  from  which  the 
above  is  quoted,  was  delivered  at  one  of  the 
most  discouraging  periods  of  the  war;  when 
Lee  was  in  Pennsylvania,  and  just  before  the 
capture  of  Vicksburg. 

Among  the  other  essays  and  orations  in 
Pages  from  an  old  Volume  of  Life,  we  find 
the  Physiology  of  Walking,  which  contains 
many  interesting  facts  concerning  the  human 
wheel,  with  its  spokes  and  felloes. 

"  Walking,"  says  Doctor  Holmes,  "  is  a  per 
petual  falling  with  a  perpetual  self-recovery. 
It  is  a  most  complex,  violent,  and  perilous 
operation,  which  we  divest  of  its  extreme  dan 
ger  only  by  continual  practice  from  a  very 
early  period  of  life.  We  find  how  complex 
it  is  when  we  attempt  to  analyze  it,  and  we 
see  that  we  never  understood  it  thoroughly 
until  the  time  of  the  instantaneous  photograph. 
We  learn  how  violent  it  is,  when  we  walk 
against  a  post  or  a  door  in  the  dark.  We  dis 
cover  how  dangerous  it  is  when  we  slip  or 
trip  and  come  down,  perhaps  breaking  or  dis 
locating  our  limbs,  or  overlook  the  last  step 
of  a  flight  of  stairs,  and  discover  with  what 


17$  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

headlong  violence  we  have  been  hurling  our 
selves  forward. 

"  Two  curious  facts  are  easily  proved.  First, 
a  man  is  shorter  when  he  is  walking  than 
when  at  rest.  We  have  found  a  very  simple 
way  of  showing  this  by  having  a  rod  or  stick 
placed  horizontally,  so  as  to  touch  the  top  of 
the  head  forcibly,  as  we  stand  under  it.  In 
walking  rapidly  beneath  it,  even  if  the  eyes 
are  shut,  the  top  of  the  head  will  not  even 
graze  the  rod.  The  other  fact  is,  that  one 
side  of  a  man  always  tends  to  outwalk  the 
other  side,  so  that  no  person  can  walk  far  in 
a  straight  line,  if  he  is  blindfolded.  The  Sea 
sons,  and  The  Human  Body  and  its  Management, 
were  originally  published  in  the  Atlantic  Al 
manac.  Cinders  from  the  Ashes  gives  some 
exceedingly  interesting  reminiscences. 

Richard  Henry  Dana,  the  schoolboy,  is 
described  by  Doctor  Holmes  as  ruddy,  sturdy, 
quiet  and  reserved ;  and  of  Margaret  Fuller  he 
says,  "  Sitting  on  the  girls'  benches,  conspicu 
ous  among  the  schoolgirls  of  unlettered  ori 
gin,  by  that  look  which  rarely  fails  to  betray 
hereditary  and  congenital  culture,  was  a  young 
person  very  nearly  of  my  own  age.  She  came 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  179 

with  the  reputation  of  being  '  smart,'  as  we  should 
have  called  it  ;  clever,  as  we  say  nowadays. 
Her  air  to  her  schoolmates  was  marked  by 
a  certain  stateliness  and  distance ;  as  if  she 
had  other  thoughts  than  theirs,  and  was  not 
of  them.  She  was  a  great  student  and  a  great 
reader  of  what  she  used  to  call  '  naw-v61s ; '  I 
remember  her  so  well  as  she  appeared  at  school 
and  later,  that  I  regret  that  she  had  not  been 
faithfully  given  to  canvas  or  marble  in  the  day 
of  her  best  looks.  None  know  her  aspect 
who  have  not  seen  her  living.  Margaret,  as  I 
remember  her  at  school  and  afterwards,  was 
tall,  fair  complexioned,  with  a  watery,  aqua 
marine  lustre  in  her  light  eyes,  which  she  used 
to  make  small,  as  one  does  who  looks  at  the 
sunshine. 

"A  remarkable  point  about  her  was  that  long, 
flexile  neck,  arching  and  undulating  in  strange, 
sinuous  movements,  which  one  who  loved  her 
would  compare  to  those  of  a  swan,  and  one 
who  loved  her  not,  to  those  of  the  ophidian 
who  tempted  our  common  mother.  Her  talk 
was  affluent,  magisterial,  de  haut  en  bas,  some 
would  say  euphuistic,  but  surpassing  the  talk 
of  women  in  breadth  and  audacity.  Her  face 


180  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

kindled  and  reddened  and  dilated  in  every  feat 
ure  as  she  spoke,  and,  as  I  once  saw  her  in 
a  fine  storm  of  indignation  at  the  supposed 
ill  treatment  of  a  relative,  showed  itself  capable 
of  something  resembling  what  Milton  calls  the 
Viraginian  aspect." 

A  composition  of  Margaret's  was  one  day 
taken  up  by  the  boy  Oliver. 

"  It    is  a   trite   remark,"    she   began. 

Alas !  the  embryo-poet  did  not  know  the 
meaning  of  the  word  trite. 

"How  could  I  ever  judge  Margaret  fairly," 
he  exclaims,  "after  such  a  crushing  discovery 
of  her  superiority  ? " 

Of  his  instructors  and  schoolmates  at  Andover, 
Doctor  Holmes  has  given  us  numerous  pen 
portraits.  The  old  Academy  building  had  a 
dreary  look  to  the  homesick  boy,  but  he  soon 
recovered  from  his  "  slightly  nostalgic"  state, 
and  found  not  a  few  congenial  spirits  in  his 
new  surroundings. 

One  fine,  rosy-faced  boy  with  whom  he  had 
a  school  discussion  upon  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots, 
and  for  whom  he  has  always  cherished  a  last> 
ing  friendship,  is  now  the  well-known  Phinehas 
Barnes.  Another  little  fellow,  with  black  hair 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  181 

and  very  black  eyes,  studying  with  head  be 
tween  his  hands,  and  eyes  fastened  to  his 
book  as  if  reading  a  will  that  made  him  heir 
to  a  million,  was  the  future  professor,  Greek 
scholar  and  Bible  Commentator,  Horatio  Balch 
Hackett.  One  .of  the  masters  was  the  late 
Rev.  Samuel  Horatio  Stearns,  "an  excellent  and 
lovable  man,"  says  Doctor  Holmes,  "who  looked 
kindly  on  me,  and  for  whom  I  always  cherished 
a  sincere  regard."  Professor  Moses  Stuart  he 
describes  as  "tall,  lean,  with  strong,  bold  feat 
ures,  a  keen,  scholarly,  accipitrine  nose,  thin, 
expressive  lips,  and  great  solemnity  and  impres- 
siveness  of  voice  and  manner.  His  air  was 
Roman,  his  neck  long  and  bare,  like  Cicero's,  and 
his  toga, —  that  is,  his  broadcloth  cloak, —  was 
carried  on  his  arm,  whatever  might  have  been 
the  weather,  with  such  a  statue-like,  rigid  grace 
that  he  might  have  been  turned  into  marble 
as  he  stood,  and  looked  noble  by  the  side  of 
the  antiques  of  the  Vatican."  Then,  there  was 
Doctor  Porter,  an  invalid,  with  the  prophetic 
handkerchief  bundling  his  throat  ;  and  Doctor 
Woods,  who  looked  his  creed  decidedly,  and 
had  the  firm  fibre  of  a  theological  athlete.  But 
none  of  the  preceptors,  it  may  be  presumed, 


182  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

was  so  closely  watched  as  the  one  to  whom 
a  dream  had  come  that  he  should  drop  dead 
when  praying.  "  More  than  one  boy  kept  his 
eye  on  him  during  his  public  devotions,  pos 
sessed  by  the  same  feeling  the  man  had  who 
followed  Van  Amburgh  about,  with  the  expec 
tation,  let  us  not  say  hope,  of  seeing  the  lion 
bite  his  head  off  sooner  or  later." 
*?  In  Mechanism  in  Thought  and  Morals,  we 
/  find  a  deal  of  psychology  as  well  as  science. 

"  It  is  in  the  moral  world,"  says  Doctor  Holmes, 
"  that  materialism  has  worked  the  strangest 
confusion.  In  various  forms,  under  imposing 
names  and  aspects,  it  has  thrust  itself  into 
the  moral  relations,  until  one  hardly  knows 
where  to  look  for  any  first  principles  without 
upsetting  everything  in  searching  for  them. 

"The  moral  universe  includes  nothing  but 
the  exercise  of  choice :  all  else  is  machinery. 
What  we  can  help  and  what  we  cannot 
help  are  on  two  sides  of  a  line  which  sepa 
rates  the  sphere  of  human  responsibility  from 
that  of  the  Being  who  has  arranged  and  con 
trols  the  order  of  things. 

"  The  question  of  the  freedom  of  the  will  has 
been  an  open  one,  fron  the  days  of  Milton's 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

OBATIONS  ga  -:-  CAE3 


demons  in  conclave  to  the  noteworthy  essay 
of  Mr.  Hazard,  our  Rhode  Island  neighbor. 
It  still  hangs  suspended  between  the  seem' 
ingly  exhaustive  strongest  motive  argument 
and  certain  residual  convictions.  The  sense 
that  we  are,  to  a  limited  extent,  self-determin 
ing  ;  the  sense  of  effort  in  willing  ;  the  sense 
of  responsibility  in  view  of  the  future,  and 
the  verdict  of  conscience  in  review  of  the  past, 
—  all  of  these  are  open  to  the  accusation  of 
fallacy  ;  but  they  all  leave  a  certain  undis 
charged  balance  in  most  minds.  We  can  invoke 
the  strong  arm  of  the  Dens  in  machina,  as 
Mr.  Hazard,  and  Kant  and  others,  before  him 
have  done.  Our  will  may  be  a  primary  initi 
ating  cause  or  force,  as  unexplainable,  as  un- 
reducible,  as  indecomposable,  as  impossible  if 
you  choose,  but  as  real  to  our  belief  as  the 
(zternitas  a  parte  ante.  The  divine  foreknowl 
edge  is  no  more  in  the  way  of  delegated  choice 
than  the  divine  omnipotence  is  in  the  way  of 
delegated  power.  The  Infinite  can  surely  slip 
the  cable  of  the  finite  if  it  choose  so  to  do." 
With  outspoken  braveness  Doctor  Holmes 
rejects  "the  mechanical  doctrine  which  makes 
me,"  he  says,  "  the  slave  of  outside  influences, 


184  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

whether  it  work  with  the  logic  of  Edwards, 
or  the  averages  of  Buckle ;  whether  it  come 
in  the  shape  of  the  Greek's  destiny,  or  the 
Mahometan's  fatalism." 

But  he  claims,  too,  the  right  to  eliminate 
all  mechanical  ideas  which  have  crowded  into 
the  sphere  of  intelligent  choice  between  right 
and  wrong.  "The  pound  of  flesh,"  he  declares, 
"  I  will  grant  to  Nemesis ;  but  in  the  name 
of  human  nature,  not  one  drop  of  blood,  — 
not  one  drop." 

And  this  leads  us  to  speak  of  Doctor 
Holmes'  religious  views.  He  attends  King's 
Chapel,  and  is  classed  among  the  most  liberal- 
minded  of  the  Unitarian  creed. 

When  chairman  of  the  Boston  Unitarian 
Festival,  in  1877,  he  gave  the  following  list 
of  certain  theological  beliefs  that  he  has  always 

delighted   to    combat. 
\ 

"  May    I,"    he    begins,    "  without    committing 

any  one  but  myself,  enumerate  a  few  of  the 
stumbling  blocks  which  still  stand  in  the  way 
of  some  who  have  many  sympathies  with  what 
is  called  the  liberal  school  of  thinkers? 

"The   notion    of   sin    as  a  transferable  object. 
As     philanthropy     has     ridded     us     of     chattel 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  185 

slavery,  so  philosophy  must  rid  us  of  chattel 
sin  and  all  its  logical  consequences. 

"  The  notion  that  what  we  call  sin  is  any 
thing  else  than  inevitable,  unless  the  Deity 
had  seen  fit  to  give  every  human  being  a 
perfect  nature,  and  develop  it  by  a  perfect 
education. 

"  The  oversight  of  the  fact  that  all  moral 
relations  between  man  and  his  Maker  are  re 
ciprocal,  and  must  meet  the  approval  of  man's 
enlightened  conscience  before  he  can  render 
true  and  heartfelt  homage  to  the  power  that 
called  him  into  being,  and  is  not  the  great 
est  obligation  to  all  eternity  on  the  side  of 
the  greatest  wisdom  and  the  greatest  power? 

"  The  notion  that  the  Father  of  mankind  is 
subject  to  the  absolute  control  of  a  certain 
malignant  entity  known  under  the  false  name 
of  justice,  or  subject  to  any  law  such  as 
would  have  made  the  father  of  the  prodigal 
son  meet  him  with  an  account-book  and  pack 
him  off  to  jail,  instead  of  welcoming  him  back 
and  treating  him  to  the  fatted  calf. 

"  The  notion  that  useless  suffering  is  in  any 
sense  a  satisfaction  for  sin,  and  not  simply  an 
evil  added  to  a  previous  one." 


186  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

In    reviewing    the    life    and     the    writings    of 
Jonathan    Edwards,    Doctor     Holmes     with     his 


usuaLfairness  and-  -kiwlUt-^pirfc  toward  all  mao.- 
kind^  declares    that    the  spiritual  nature  seems 

to  be  a  natural  endowment,  like  a  musical  ear. 
"Those  who  have  no  ear  for  music  must  be 
very  careful  how  they  speak  about  that  mys 
terious  world  of  thrilling  vibrations  which  are 
idle  noises  to  them.  And  so  the  true  saint 
can  be  appreciated  only  by  saintly  natures. 
Yet  the  least  spiritual  man  can  hardly  read 
the  remarkable  '  Resolutions  '  of  Edwards  with 
out  a  reverence  akin  to  awe  for  his  purity  and 
elevation.  His  beliefs  and  his  conduct  we  need 
not  hesitate  to  handle  freely.  The  spiritual 
nature  is  no  safeguard  against  error  of  doc 
trine  or  practice;  indeed  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  a  majority  of  all  the  spiritual  natures  in 
the  world  would  be  found  in  Christian  coun 
tries.  Edwards'  system  seems,  in  the  light  of 
to-day,  to  the  last  degree  barbaric,  mechanical, 
materialistic,  pessimistic.  If  he  had  lived  a 
hundred  years  later,  and  breathed  the  air  of 
freedom,  he  could  not  have  written  with  such 
old-world  barbarism  as  we  find  in  his  volcanic 
sermons. 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  187 

"There  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  attacking 
the  motives  of  a  man  so  saintly  in  life,  so 
holy  in  aspirations,  so  patient,  so  meek,  so  la 
borious,  so  thoroughly  in  earnest  in  the  work 
to  which  his  life  was  given.  But  after  long 
smothering  in  the  sulphurous  atmosphere  of 
his  thought,  one  cannot  help  asking,  is  this, 

—  or  anything  like  this, — the  accepted  belief  of 
any   considerable   part  of   Protestantism  ?     If   so, 
we   must    say    with    Bacon,     '  It    were   better   to 
have   no   opinion    of   God   than    such   an  opinion 
as    is    unworthy    of   him.' ' 

In  speaking  of  the  old  reproach  against   physi 
cians,  that  where  there  were    three   of   them    to 
gether   there   were    two    atheists,  Doctor  Holmes 
pertinently   remarks  :    "  There   is,  undoubtedly,  a 
strong   tendency  in  the   pursuits   of  the  medical 
profession  to  produce  disbelief  in  that  figment  of  / 
tradition  and  diseased    human   imagination  which  I 
has  been    installed   in    the    seat    of    divinity   by/ 
the  priesthood  of  cruel  and  ignorant  ages.     It  is 
impossible,  or,  at  least,  very  difficult,  for  a  physi 
cian  who  has  seen  the  perpetual  efforts  of  Nature 

—  whose  diary  is  the  book  he  reads  oftenest  —  to 
heal  wounds,  to  expel  poisons,  to  do  the  best  that 
can  be  done  under  the  given   conditions,  —  it   is 


188  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

very  difficult  for  him  to  believe  in  a  world  where 
wounds  cannot  heal,  where  opiates  cannot  give 
a  respite  from  pain,  where  sleep  never  comes 
with  its  sweet  oblivion  of  suffering,  where 
the  art  of  torture  is  the  only  faculty  which  re 
mains  to  the  children  of  that  same  Father  who 
cares  for  the  falling  sparrow.  The  Deity  has 
often  been  pictured  as  Moloch,  and  the  physician 
has,  no  doubt,  frequently  repudiated  him  as  a 
monstrosity. 

\  "  On  the  other  hand,  the  physician  has  often 
.X  been  renounced  for  piety  as  well  as  for  his  pecu 
liarly  professional  virtue  of  charity,  led  upward  by 
what  he  sees  the  source  of  all  the  daily  mar 
vels  wrought  before  his  own  eyes.  So  at  was 
that  Galen  gave  utterance  to  that  song  of  praise 
which  the  sweet  singer  of  Israel  need  not  have 
been  ashamed  of;  and  if  this  heathen  could  be 
lifted  into  such  a  strain  of  devotion,  we  need  not 
be  surprised  to  find  so  many  devout  Christian 
worshippers  among  the  crowd  of  medical  'athe 
ists.1  " 

In  coming  back  again  as  a  regular  contribu 
tor  to  the  magazine  which  Doctor  Holmes  was 
so  prominently  identified  with  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  he  indulges  in  a  few  entertaining 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  189 

reflections.  "When  I  sat  down  to  write  the 
first  paper  I  sent  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly" 
he  says,  "  I  felt  somewhat  as  a  maiden  of 
more  than  mature  effloresence  may  be  supposed 
to  feel  as  she  passes  down  the  broad  aisle  in 
her  bridal  veil  and  wealth  of  orange  blossoms. 
I  had  written  little  of  late  years.  I  was  at 
that  time  older  than  Goldsmith  was  when  he 
died,  and  Goldsmith,  as  Doctor  Johnson  says, 
was  a  plant  that  flowered  late.  A  new  gener 
ation  had  grown  up  since  I  had  written  the 
verses  by  which,  if  remembered  at  all,  I  was 
best  known.  I  honestly  feared  that  I  might 
prove  the  superfluous  veteran  who  has  no  busi 
ness  behind  the  footlights.  I  can  as  honestly 
say  that  it  turned  out  otherwise.  I  was  most 
kindly  welcomed,  and  now  I  am  looking  back 
on  that  far-off  time  as  the  period — I  will  not 
say  of  youth  —  for  I  was  close  upon  the  five- 
barred  gate  of  the  cinquantaine,  though  I  had 
not  yet  taken  the  leap  —  but  of  marrowy  and 
vigorous  manhood.  Those  were  the  days  of 
unaided  vision,  of  acute  hearing,  of  alert  move 
ments,  of  feelings  almost  boyish  in  their  vivacity. 
It  is  a  long  cry  from  the  end  of  a  second 
quarter  of  a  century  in  a  man's  life  to  the 


190  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

end  of  the  third  quarter.  His  companions  have 
fallen  all  around  him,  and  he  finds  himself  in 
a  newly  peopled  world.  His  mental  furnishing 
looks  old-fashioned  and  faded  to  the  generation  . 
which  is  crowding  about  him  with  its  new 
patterns  and  fresh  colors.  Shall  he  throw  open 
his  apartments  to  visitors,  or  is  it  not  wiser 
to  live  on  his  memories  in  a  decorous  privacy, 
and  not  risk  himself  before  the  keen  young 
eyes  and  relentless  judgment  of  the  new-comers, 
who  have  grown  up  in  strength  and  self-reli 
ance  while  he  has  been  losing  force  and  con 
fidence.  If  that  feeling  came  over  me  a  quarter 
of  a  century  ago,  it  is  not  strange  that  it 
comes  back  upon  me  now.  Having  laid  down 
the  burden,  which  for  more  than  thirty-five 
years  I  have  carried  cheerfully,  I  might  natur 
ally  seek  the  quiet  of  my  chimney  corner,  and 
purr  away  the  twilight  of  my  life,  unheard 
beyond  the  circle  of  my  own  fireplace.  But 
when  I  see  what  my  living  contemporaries  are 
doing,  I  am  shamed  out  of  absolute  inertness 
and  silence.  The  men  of  my  birth  year  are 
so  painfully  industrious  at  this  very  time  that 
one  of  the  same  date  hardly  dares  to  be  idle, 
I  look  across  the  Atlantic  and  see  Mr.  Glad- 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  191 

stone,  only  four  months  younger  than  myself, 
and  standing  erect  with  patriots'  grievances  on 
one  shoulder,  and  Pharaoh's  pyramids  on  the 
other — an  Atlas  whose  intervals  of  repose  are 
paroxysms  of  learned  labor ;  I  listen  to  Tenny 
son,  another  birth  of  the  same  year,  filling  the 
air  with  melody  long  after  the  singing  months 
of  life  are  over ;  I  come  nearer  home,  and 
here  is  my  very  dear  friend  and  college  class 
mate,  so  certain  to  be  in  every  good  move 
ment  with  voice  or  pen,  or  both,  that,  where 
two  or  three  are  gathered  together  for  useful 
ends,  if  James  Freeman  Clarke  is  not  with 
them,  it  is  because  he  is  busy  with  a  book  or 
a  discourse  meant  for  a  larger  audience;  I 
glance  at  the  placards  on  the  blank  walls  that 
I  am  passing,  and  there  I  see  the  colossal 
head  of  Barnum,  the  untiring,  inexhaustible, 
insuperable,  ever-triumphant  and  jubilant  Bar 
num,  who  came  to  his  atmospheric  life  less 
than  a  year  before  I  began  to  breathe  the 
fatal  mixture,  and  still  wages  his  Titanic 
battle  with  his  own  past  superlatives.  How 
can  one  dare  to  sit  down  inactive  with  such 
examples  before  him?  One  must  do  something, 


192  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

were  it  nothing  more  profitable  than  the  work 
of  that  dear  old  Penelope,  of  almost  ninety 
years,  whom  I  so  well  remember  hemming 
over  and  over  again  the  same  piece  of  linen, 
her  attendant  scissors  removing  each  day's  work 
at  evening ;  herself  meantime  being  kindly 
nursed  in  the  illusion  that  she  was  still  the 
useful  martyr  of  the  household." 

An  author,  in  Doctor  Holmes'  opinion,  should 
know  that  the  very  characteristics  which  make 
him  the  object  of  admiration  to  many,  and 
endear  him  to  some  among  them,  will  render 
him  an  object  of  dislike  to  a  certain  number 
of  individuals  of  equal,  it  may  be  of  superior, 
intelligence.  The  converse  of  all  this  is  very 
true. 

"There  will  be  individuals  —  they  may  be  few, 
they  may  be  many — who  will  so  instantly 
recognize,  so  eagerly  accept,  so  warmly  adopt, 
even  so  devoutly  idolize,  the  writer  in  question, 
that  self-love  itself,  dulled  as  its  palate  is  by 
the  hot  spices  of  praise,  draws  back  overcome 
by  the  burning  stimulants  of  adoration.  I  was 
told,  not  long  since,  by  one  of  our  most  justly 
admired  authoresses,  that  a  correspondent  wrote 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  193 

to  her  that  she  had  read  one  of  her  stories 
fourteen  times  in  succession." 

There  is  a  deep  meaning  in  these  elective 
affinities.  Each  personality  is  more  or  less 
completely  the  complement  of  some  other. 
Doctor  Holmes  thinks  it  should  never  be  for 
gotten  by  the  critic  that  "  every  grade  of 
mental  development  demands  a  literature  of  its 
own ;  a  little  above  its  level,  that  it  may  be 
lifted  to  a  higher  grade,  but  not  too  much 
above  it,  so  that  it  requires  too  long  a  stride  — 
a  stairway,  not  a  steep  wall  to  climb.  The 
true  critic  is  not  the  sharp  captator  verborum ; 
not  the  brisk  epigrammatist,  showing  off  his 
own  cleverness,  always  trying  to  outflank  the 
author  against  whom  he  has  arrayed  his  wits 
and  his  learning.  He  is  a  man  who  knows 
the  real  wants  of  the  reading  world,  and  can 
prize  at  their  just  value  the  writings  which 
meet  those  wants." 

There  is  also  another  side  of  the  picture. 
Doctor  Holmes  does  not  forget  the  trials  of 
authorship.  The  writer  who  attains  a  certain 
measure  of  popularity  "  will  be  startled  to  find 
himself  the  object  of  an  embarrassing  devotion, 
and  almost"  appropriation,  by  some  of  his  parish 


194  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

of  readers.  He  will  blush  at  his  lonely  desk, 
as  he  reads  the  extravagances  of  expression 
which  pour  over  him  like  the  oil  which  ran 
down  upon  the  beard  of  Aaron,  and  even  down 
to  the  skirts  of  his  garments  —  an  extreme 
unction  which  seems  hardly  desirable.  We 
ought  to  have  his  photograph  as  he  reads  one 
of  those  frequent  missives,  oftenest  traced,  we 
may  guess,  in  the  delicate,  slanting  hand  which 
betrays  the  slender  fingers  of  the  sympathetic 
sisterhood. 

"A  slight  sense  of  the  ridiculous  at  being 
made  so  much  of  qualifies  the  placid  toler 
ance  with  which  the  rhymester  or  the  essay 
ist  sees  himself  preferred  to  the  great  masters 
in  prose  and  verse,  and  reads  his  name  glow 
ing  in  a  halo  of  epithets  which  might  belong 
to  Bacon  or  Milton.  We  need  not  grudge 
him  such  pleasure  as  he  may  derive  from  the 
illusion  of  a  momentary  revery,  in  which  he 
dreams  of  himself  as  clad  in  royal  robes  and 
exalted  among  the  immortals.  The  next  post 
will  probably  bring  him  some  slip  from  a 
newspaper  or  critical  journal,  which  will  strip 
him  of  his  regalia,  as  Thackeray,  in  one  of 
his  illustrations,  has  disrobed  and  denuded  the 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  195 

grand  monarque.  He  saw  himself  but  a 
moment  ago  a  colossal  figure  in  a  drapery  of 
rhetorical  purple,  ample  enough  for  an  Em 
peror,  as  Bernini  would  clothe  him.  The 
image  breaker  has  passed  by,  belittling  him 
by  comparison,  jostling  him  off  his  pedestal, 
levelling  his  most  prominent  feature,  or  even 
breaking  a  whole  ink  bottle  against  him  as 
the  indignant  moralist  did  on  the  figure  in  the 
vestibule  of  the  opera  house  —  the  shortest 
and  most  effective  satire  that  ever  came  from 
that  fountain  of  approval  and  commendation. 
Such  are  some  of  the  varied  experiences  of 
authorship." 

Out  of  his  literary  career  as  a  successful 
writer,  Doctor  Holmes  has  been  able  to  for 
mulate  many  rules  for  the  self-protection  of 
authors,  which  were  adopted  unanimously  at 
an  authors'  association  which  was  held  in 
Washington  last  September,  and  the  remainder 
of  his  "talk"  is  devoted  to  extracts  from  their 
proceedings.  Appended  are  a  few  of  them : 

Of  visits  of  strangers  to  authors.  These 
are  not  always  distinguishable  from  each 
other,  and  may  justly  be  considered  together. 
The  stranger  should  send  up  his  card  if  he 


196  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

has  one ;  if  he  has  none,  he  should,  if  ad 
mitted,  at  once  announce  himself  and  his 
object,  without  circumlocution,  as  thus ;  "  My 
name  is  M.  or  N.,  from  X.  or  Y.  I  wish  to 
see  and  take  the  hand  of  a  writer  whom  I 
have  long  admired  for  his,"  etc.,  etc.  Here 
the  author  should  extend  his  hand,  and  reply  in 
substance  as  follows:  "I  am  pleased  to  see 
you,  my  dear  sir,  and  very  glad  that  any 
thing  I  have  written  has  been  a  source  of 
pleasure  or  profit  to  you."  The  visitor  has 
now  had  what  he  says  he  came  for,  and,  after 
making  a  brief  polite  acknowledgment,  should 
retire,  unless,  for  special  reasons,  he  is  urged 
to  stay  longer. 

Of  autograph-seekers.  The  increase  in  the 
number  of  applicants  for  autographs  is  so  great 
that  it  has  become  necessary  to  adopt  positive 
regulations  to  protect  the  author  from  the  ex 
orbitant  claims  of  this  class  of  virtuosos.  The 
following  propositions  were  adopted  without  dis 
cussion  : 

No  author  is  under  any  obligation  to  answer 
any  letter  from  an  unknown  person  applying 
for  his  autograph.  If  he  sees  fit  to  do  so,  it 
is  a  gratutious  concession  on  his  part. 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  197 

No  stranger  should  ask  for  more  than  one 
autograph. 

No  stranger  should  request  an  author  to 
copy  a  poem,  or  even  a  verse.  He  should 
remember  that  he  is  one  of  many  thousands ; 
that  one  thousand  fleas  are  worse  than  one 
hornet,  and  that  a  mob  of  mosquitoes  will 
draw  more  blood  than  a  single  horse  leech. 

Every  correspondent  applying  for  an  auto 
graph  should  send  a  card  or  blank  paper,  in 
a  stamped  envelope,  directed  to  himself  (or 
herself).  If  he  will  not  take  the  trouble  to 
attend  to  all  this,  which  he  can  just  as  well 
as  to  make  the  author  do  it,  he  must  not 
expect  the  author  to  make  good  his  defi 
ciencies.  [Accepted  by  acclamation]. 

Sending  a  stamp  does  not  constitute  a  claim 
on  an  author  for  answer.  [Received  with  loud 
applause].  The  stamp  may  be  retained  by  the 
author,  or,  what  is  better,  devoted  to  the  use 
of  some  appropriate  charity,  as  for  instance, 
the  asylum  for  idiots  and  feeble-minded  per 
sons. 

Albums.  An  album  of  decent  external  as 
pect  may,  without  impropriety,  be  offered 
to  an  author,  with  the  request  that  he  will 


198  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

write  his  name  therein.  It  is  not  proper,  as 
a  general  rule,  to  ask  for  anything  more 
than  the  name.  The  author  may,  of  course, 
add  a  quotation  from  his  writings,  or  a  senti 
ment,  if  so  disposed;  but  this  must  be"  con 
sidered  as  a  work  of  supererogation,  and  an 
exceptional  manifestation  of  courtesy. 

Bed-quilt  autographs.  It  should  be  a  source 
of  gratification  to  an  author  to  contribute  to 
the  soundness  of  his  reader's  slumbers,  if  he 
cannot  keep  him  awake  by  his  writings.  He 
should  therefore  cheerfully  inscribe  his  name 
on  the  scrap  of  satin  or  other  stuff  (provided 
always  that  it  be  sent  him  in  a  stamped  and 
directed  envelope),  that  it  may  take  its  place 
in  the  patchwork  mosaic  for  which  it  is  in 
tended. 

Letters  of  admiration.  These  may  be  ac 
cepted  as  genuine,  unless  they  contain  speci 
mens  of  the  writer's  own  composition,  upon 
which  a  critical  opinion  is  requested,  in  which 
case  they  are  to  be  regarded  in  the  same 
light  as  medicated  sweetmeats,  namely,  as 
meaning  more  than  their  looks  imply.  Gen 
uine  letters  of  admiration,  being  usually  con* 
sidered  by  the  recipient  as  proofs  of  good 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  199 

taste  and  sound  judgment  on  the  part  of  his 
unknown  correspondent,  may  be  safely  left  to 
his  decision  as  to  whether  they  shall  be  an 
swered  or  not. 

The  author  of  Elsie  Venner  thus  excuses 
himself  for  opening  the  budget  of  the  griev 
ances  of  authors.  "  In  obtaining  and  giving  to 
the  public  this  abstract  of  the  proceedings  of 
the  association,  I  have  been  impelled  by  the 
same  feelings  of  humanity  which  led  me  to 
join  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty 
to  Animals,  believing  that  the  sufferings  of 
authors  are  as  much  entitled  to  sympathy  and 
relief  as  those  of  the  brute  creation." 

The  birthday  of  the  Emperor  of  Japan  is  the 
principal  holiday  of  the  year  among  his  subjects, 
and  as  Saturday,  November  3d,  1883,  was 
the  thirty-third  anniversary  of  the  birthday  of 
Mutsuhito  Tenno,  the  reigning  Emperor,  it  was 
appropriately  celebrated  by  the  Japanese  gen 
tlemen  in  Boston.  The  Japanese  department 
at  the  Foreign  Exhibition  was  closed,  and  in 
the  evening  a  banquet  was  given  at  the  Par 
ker  House,  about  sixty  gentlemen  assembling 
in  response  to  the  invitation  of  Mr.  S.  R. 
Takahashi,  chief  of  the  imperial  Japanese  com- 


200  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

mission  to  the  Boston  Foreign  Exhibition. 
The  entrance  to  the  banquet  rooms  was  deco 
rated  with  the  Japanese  and  American  colors, 
and  at  the  head  of  the  hall  were  portraits  of 
the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Japan,  with  the 
colors  of  that  country  between  them.  The 
occasion  was  a  very  enjoyable  one,  and  was 
especially  interesting  as  it  was  a  departure  from 
the  custom  at  ordinary  dinners  here,  several 
gentlemen  dividing  with  the  presiding  officer 
the  duty  of  proposing  the  toasts.  One  of  the 
most  delightful  orations  of  the  evening  given 
by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  was  as  follows  : 

"  I  have  heard  of  '  English  as  she  is  spoke," 
being  taught  in  ten  lessons,  but  I  never  heard 
that  a  nation's  literature  could  have  justice 
done  to  it  in  ten  minutes.  An  ancestress  of 
mine  —  one  of  my  thirty-two  great-great-great- 
great-grandmothers  —  a  noted  poetess  in  her 
day,  thus  addressed  her  little  brood  of  children : 

Alas !    my  birds,   you   wisdom  want 
Of  perils   you   are  ignorant ; 
Ofttimes   in   grass,   on   trees,   in   flight^ 
Sore   accidents   on   you   may  light; 
Oh,  to  your   safety   have  an  eye, 
So   happy  may  you   live   and   die. 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  201 

"  In  accepting  your  kind  invitation,  I  confess 
that  I  was  ignorant  of  my  perils.  I  did  not 
follow  the  counsel  of  my  grandmamma  with 
the  four  g's  in  having  an  eye  to  my  own 
safety.  For  I  fear  that  if  I  had  dreamed  of 
being  called  on  to  answer  for  American  litera 
ture,  one  of  those  '  previous  engagements,' 
which  crop  out  so  opportunely,  would  have 
stood  between  me  and  my  present  trying  posi 
tion.  I  had  meant,  if  called  upon,  to  say  a 
few  words  about  a  Japanese  youth  who  studied 
law  in  Boston,  a  very  cultivated  and  singu 
larly  charming  young  person,  who  died  not 
very  long  after  his  return  to  his  native  country. 
Some  of  you  may  remember  young  Enouie  — 
I  am  not  sure  that  I  spell  it  rightly,  and  I 
know  that  I  cannot  pronounce  it  properly ;  for 
from  his  own  lips  it  was  as  soft  as  an  angel's 
whisper.  His  intelligence,  his  delicate  breeding, 
the  loveliness  of  his  character,  captivated  all 
who  knew  him.  We  loved  htm,  and  we  mourned 
for  him  as  if  he  had  been  a  child  of  our  own 
soil.  But  of  him  I  must  say  no  more. 

"  In  speaking  of  American  literature  we  nat 
urally  think  first  of  our  historical  efforts.  We 
see  that  books  hold  but  a  small  part  of  Amer- 


202  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

ican  history.  The  axe  and  the  ploughshare  are 
the  two  pens  with  which  our  New  World 
annals  have  been  principally  written,  with 
schoolhouses  as  notes  of  interrogation,  and 
steeples  as  exclamation  points  of  pious  adora 
tion  and  gratitude.  Within  half  a  century  the 
railroad  has  ruled  our  broad  page  all  over,  and 
rewritten  the  story,  with  States  for  new  chap 
ters  and  cities  for  paragraphs.  This  is  the 
kind  of  history  which  he  who  runs  may  read, 
and  he  must  run  fast  and  far  if  he  means  to 
read  any  considerable  part  of  it. 

"But  we  must  not  forget  our  political  his 
tory,  perishable  in  great  measure  as  to  its  form, 
long  enduring  in  its  results.  This  literature  is 
the  index  of  our  progress  —  in  both  directions 
—*  forward  and  the  contrary.  From  the  days 
of  Washington  and  Franklin  to  the  times 
still  fresh  in  our  memory,  from  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  to  the  proclamation  which 
enfranchised  the  colored  race,  :6tir  political  lit 
erature,  with  all  its  terrible  blunders  and 
short-comings,  has  been,  after  all,  the  fairest 
expression  the  world  has  yet  seen  of  what  a 
free  people  and  a  free  press  have  to  say  and 
to  show  for  themselves. 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  203 

"But  besides  'Congressional  Documents'  and 
the  like,  the  terror  of  librarians  and  the  de 
light  of  paper-makers,  we  do  a  good  deal  of 
other  printing.  We  make  some  books,  a  good 
many  books,  a  great  many  books,  so  many 
that  the  hyperbole  at  the  end  of  St.  John's 
gospel  would  hardly  be  an  extravagance  in 
speaking  of  them.  And  among  these  are  a 
number  of  histories  which  hold  an  honorable 
place  on  the  shelves  of  all  the  great  libraries 
of  Christendom.  Why  should  I  enumerate 
them  ?  For  history  is  a  Boston  specialty. 
From  the  days  of  Prescott  and  Ticknor  to 
those  of  Motley  and  Parkman,  we  have  al 
ways  had  an  historian  or  two  on  hand,  as 
they  used  always  to  have  a  lion  or  two  in 
the  Tower  of  London. 

"  Next  to  the  historians  naturally  cojne  the 
story-tellers  and  romancers.  The  essential  dif 
ference  is  —  I  would  not  apply  the  rough 
side  of  the  r^-iark  to  historians  like  the  best 
of  our  own,  but  it  is  very  often  the  fact  — 
that  history  tells  lies  about  real  persons  and 
fiction  tells  truth  through  the  mouths  of  un 
real  ones.  England  threw  open  the  side  doors 
of  its  library  to  Irving.  The  continent  flung 


204  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

wide  its  folding  doors  to  Cooper.  Laplace 
was  once  asked  who  was  the  greatest  mathe 
matician  of  Germany.  'Pfaff  is  the  greatest,' 
he  answered.  '  I  thought  Gauss  was,'  the 
questioner  said.  'You  asked  me,'  rejoined 
Laplace,  'who  was  the  greatest  mathematician 
of  Germany.  Gauss  was  the  greatest  mathe 
matician  of  Europe.'  So,  I  suppose  we  might 
say  The  Pilot  is  or  was  the  most  popular 
book  ever  written  in  America,  but  Uncle  Toms 
Cabin  is  the  most  popular  story  ever  pub 
lished  in  the  world.  And  if  The  Heart  of 
Mid  Lothian  added  a  new  glory  of  romance 
to  the  traditions  of  Auld  Reekie,  The  Scarlet 
Letter  did  as  much  for  the  memories  of  our 
own  New  England.  I  need  not  speak  of  the 
living  writers,  some  of  whom  are  among  us, 
who  have  changed  the  old  scornful  question 
into  'Who  does  not  read  an  American 
book?' 

"  As  to  poetical  literature,  I  must  confess 
that,  except  a  line  or  two  of  Philip  Freneau's,  I 
know  little  worthy  of  special  remembrance  be 
fore  the  beginning  of  this  century,  always 
excepting,  as  in  duty  bound,  the  verses  of 
my  manifold  grandmother.  The  conditions  of 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  205 

the  country  were  unfavorable  to  the  poetical 
habit  of  mind.  The  voice  that  broke  the 
silence  was  that  of  Bryant,  a  clear  and  smooth 
baritone,  if  I  may  borrow  a  musical  term, 
with  a  gamut  of  a  few  notes  of  a  grave  and 
manly  quality.  Then  came  Longfellow,  the 
poet  of  the  fireside,  of  the  library,  of  all  gentle 
souls  and  cultivated  tastes,  whose  Muse  breathed 
a  soft  contralto  that  was  melody  itself,  and 
Emerson,  with  notes  that  reached  an  octave 
higher  than  any  American  poet  —  a  singer 
whose 

Voice  fell   like   a  falling   star. 

Like  that  of  the  bird  addressed  by  Words 
worth  — 

At  once  far  off  and  near, 

it   was  a 

Cry 

Which  made  [us]  look  a  thousand  ways, 
In  bush  and  tree  and  sky; 

for  whether  it  soared  from  the  earth  or  dropped 
from  heaven,  it  was  next  to  impossible  to 
divine. 

"  I  will  not  speak   of  the   living  poets   of  the 
old   or   the  new   generation.     It    belongs   to   the 


206  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

young  to  give  the  heartiest  welcome  to  the 
new  brood  of  singers.  Samuel  Rogers  said 
that  when  he  heard  a  new  book  praised,  he 
read  an  old  one.  Mr.  Emerson,  in  one  of  his 
later  essays,  advises  us  never  to  read  a  book 
that  is  not  a  year  old.  This  I  will  say,  that 
every  month  shows  us  in  the  magazines,  and 
even  in  the  newspapers,  verse  that  would 
have  made  a  reputation  in  the  early  days  of 
the  North  American  Review,  but  which  attracts 
little  more  notice  than  a  breaking  bubble. 

"  A  great  improvement  is  noticeable  in  the 
character  of  criticism,  which  is  leaving  the 
hands  of  the  'general  utility'  writers  and 
passing  into  the  hands  of  experts.  The  true 
critic  is  the  last  product  of  literary  civiliza 
tion.  It  costs  as  great  an  effort  to  human 
ize  the  being  known  by  that  name  as  it  does 
to  make  a  good  church-member  of  a  scalping 
savage.  Criticism  is  a  noble  function,  but 
only  so  in  noble  hands.  We  have  just  wel 
comed  Mr.  Arnold  as  its  worthy  English  rep 
resentative  ;  we  could  not  secure  our  creditors 
more  handsomely  than  we  have  done  by  leav 
ing  Mr.  Lowell  in  pledge  for  our  visitor's  safe 
return. 


ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  207 

"  One  more  hopeful  mark  of  literary  progress 
is  seen  in  our  cyclopaedias,  our  periodicals, 
our  newspapers,  and  I  may  add  our  indexes. 
I  would  commend  to  the  attention  of  our 
enlightened  friends  such  works  as  Mr.  Pool's 
great  Index  to  Periodical  Literature,  Mr.  Ali- 
bone's  Dictionary  of  Authors,  and  the  Index 
Medicus,  now  publishing  at  Washington  —  a 
wonderful  achievement  of  organized  industry, 
still  carried  on  under  the  superintendence  of 
Doctor  Billings,  and  well  deserving  examin 
ation  by  all  scholars,  whatever  their  calling. 

"  We  have  learned  so  much  from  our  Japa 
nese  friends,  that  we  should  be  thankful  to  pay 
them  back  something  in  return.  With  art  such 
as  they  have,  they  must  also  have  a  literature 
showing  the  same  originality,  grace,  facility  and 
simple  effectiveness.  Let  us  hope  they  will 
carry  away  something  of  our  intellectual  pro 
ducts,  as  well  as  those  good  wishes  which 
follow  them  wherever  they  show  their  beauti 
ful  works  of  art  and  their  pleasant  and  always 
welcome  faces." 


208  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

THE    HOME    CIRCLE. 

DOCTOR  HOLMES  has  two  sons  and  one 
daughter.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  Junior, 
his  eldest  child,  was  born  in  1841.  When  a  young 
lad,  he  attended  the  school  of  Mr.  E.  S.  Dixwell, 
in  Boston,  and  it  was  here  that  he  met  his 
future  wife,  Miss  Fannie  Dixwell.  In  his  grad 
uating  year  at  Harvard  College  (1861),  he 
joined  the  Fourth  Battalion  of  Infantry, 
commanded  by  Major  Thomas  G.  Steven 
son.  The  company  was  at  that  time  stationed 
at  Fort  Independence,  Boston  Harbor,  and  it 
was  there  that  young  Holmes  wrote  his  poem 
for  Class  Day.  He  served  three  years  in  the 
war,  and  was  wounded  first  in  the  breast  at 
Ball's  Bluff,  and  then  in  the  neck  at  the  Battle 
of  Antietam. 

In    Doctor    Holmes'    Hunt    after    the   Captain, 
we   have  not  only  a   vivid   picture  of   war  times, 


THE  I10ME  CIRCLE.  209 

but  a  most  touching  revelation  of  fatherly  love 
and  solicitude.  The  young  captain  was  wounded 
yet  again  at  Sharpsburgh,  and  was  after 
wards  brevetted  as  Lieutenant-Colonel.  During 
General  Grant's  campaign  of  1864  he  served  as 
aide-de-camp  to  Brigadier-General  H.  G.  Wright. 
After  the  war  he  entered  the  Harvard  Law 
School,  and  in  1866  received  the  degree  of 
LL.  B.  Since  then  he  has  practised  law  in 
Boston,  and  has  written  many  valuable  articles 
upon  legal  subjects. 

His  edition  of  Kent's  Commentaries  on  Amer 
ican  Law,  to  which  he  devoted  three  years  of 
careful  labor,  has  received  the  highest  encomi 
ums,  and  his  volume  on  The  Common  Law  forms 
an  indispensable  part  of  every  law  student's 
library. 

In  1882,  he  was  appointed  Professor  in  the 
Harvard  Law  School,  and  a  few  weeks  later 
was  elected  Justice  in  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Massachusetts. 

At  the  Lawyers'  Banquet,  given  January  3Oth, 
1883,  at  the  Hotel  Vendome,  Honorable  Wil 
liam  G.  Russell  thus  introduced  the  father  of 
the  newly-appointed  judge : 

"  We  come  now  to   a  many-sided   subject,   and 


210  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

I  know  not  on  which  side  to  attack  him  with 
any  hope  of  capturing  him.  I  might  hail  him 
as  our  poet,  for  he  was  born  a  poet ;  they  are 
all  born  so.  If  he  didn't  lisp  in  numbers,  it 
was  because  he  spoke  plainly  at  a  very  early 
age.  I  might  hail  him  as  physician,  and  a 
long  and  well-spent  life  in  that  profession  would 
justify  it ;  but  I  don't  believe  it  will  ever  be 
known  whether  he  has  cured  more  cases  of 
dyspepsia  and  blues  by  his  poems  or  his  pow 
ders  and  his  pills.  I  might  hail  him  as  pro 
fessor,  and  as  professor  emeritus  he  has  added 
a  new  wreath  to  his  brow.  I  might  hail  him 
as  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table,  for  there 
he  had  a  long  reign.  He  will  defend  himself 
with  courage,  for  he  never  showed  the 
white  feather  but  once,  and  that  is,  that  he 
does  not  dare  to  be  as  funny  as  he  can.  A 
tough  subject,  surely,  and  I  must  try  him  on 
the  tender  side,  the  paternal.  I  give  you  the 
father  who  went  in  search  of  a  captain,  and, 
finding  him,  presents  to  us  now  his  son,  the 
judge." 

On  rising,  Doctor  Holmes  held  up  a  sheet 
of  paper,  and  said,  "  You  see  before  you  "  (refer 
ring  to  the  paper)  "all  that  you  have  to  fear 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  211 

or  hope.  For  thirty-five  years  I  have  taught 
anatomy.  I  have  often  heard  of  the  roots  of 
the  tongue,  but  I  never  found  them.  The  dan 
ger  of  a  tongue  let  loose  you  have  had  oppor 
tunity  to  know  before,  but  the  danger  of  a 
scrap  of  paper  like  this  is  so  trivial  that  I 
hardly  need  to  apologize  for  it." 

His  Honor's  father  yet    remains, 

His  proud  paternal  posture  firm  in; 
But,  while  his  right  he  still  maintains 
To  wield  the  household  rod  and  reins, 

He  bows  before   the   filial  ermine. 

What  curious  tales   has   life   in  store, 
With  all  its   must-bes   and   its   may-bes ! 

The  sage   of  eighty  years   and  more 

Once   crept  a  nursling  on  the   floor, — 

Kings,   conquerors,   judges,   all   were   babies. 

The  fearless  soldier,  who  has  faced 
The  serried  bayonets'  gleam  appalling, 

For  nothing  save  a  pin  misplaced 

The  peaceful  nursery  has  disgraced 
With  hours  of  unheroic  bawling. 

The   mighty  monarch,   whose   renown 

Fills  up   the  stately   page   historic, 
Has   howled  to  waken   half  the  town, 
And  finished  off  by   gulping  down 

His  castor   oil  or  paregoric. 


212  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

The  justice,  who,  in  gown  and  cap,  ^ 

Condemns  a  wretch   to   strangulation, 
Has  scratched   his  nurse   and   spilled  his  pap, 
And  sprawled   across   his  mother's   lap 
For  wholesome   law's   administration. 

Ah,   life   has   many   a   reef   to  shun 

Before   in  port   we   drop   our  anchor, 
But  when   its  course   is    nobly  run 
Look  aft !  for  there  the  work    was  done. 
Life  owes   its  headway   to   the  spanker  I 

Yon  seat  of  justice   well   might  awe 

The   fairest   manhood's  half-blown   summer ; 
There   Parsons  scourged  the   laggard  law, 
There   reigned   and   ruled   majestic  Shaw,  — 
What  ghosts  to  hail   the  last  new-comer  1 

One   cause  of  fear   I  faintly  name,  — 

The   dread  lest   duty's   dereliction 
Shall  give   so   rarely   cause  for  blame 
Our  guileless   voters  will   exclaim, 
"  No  need   of  human  jurisdiction  1  " 

What  keeps  the  doctor's  trade  alive? 

Bad   air,   bad  water;  more's  the  pity! 
• 
But  lawyers  walk  where  doctors  drive, 

And  starve  in   streets   where   surgeons   thrives 
Our   Boston  is  so  pure   a  city. 

What  call  for  judge  or  court,  indeed, 

When   righteousness   prevails  so   through  it 

Our  virtuous  car-conductors   need 

Only  a  card  whereon  they  read 

"Do  right;  it's  naughty  not  to  do  it!" 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  218 

The  whirligig  of  time  goes  round, 

And  changes  all  things  but  affection ; 
One  blessed  comfort  may  be  found 
In  heaven's  broad  statute  which  has  bound 

Each  household  to  its  head's  protection. 

If  e'er  aggrieved,  attacked,  accused, 

A  sire  may  claim  a  son's  devotion 
To  shield  his  innocence  abused, 
As  old  Anchises  freely  used 

His  offspring's  legs  for  locomotion. 

You  smile.     You   did   not  come   to  weep, 

Nor  I   my  weakness  to  be  showing ; 
And  these  gay  stanzas,  slight  and  cheap, 
Have  served  their  simple  use,  —  to  keep 

A  father's  eyes  from  overflowing. 

Doctor  Holmes'  daughter,  who  bears  her 
mother's  name,  Amelia  Jackson,  married  the 
late  John  Turner  Sargent.  In  her  Sketches 
and  Reminiscences  of  the  Radical  Club,  we  have 
some  pithy  remarks  of  Doctor  Holmes'.  To 
speak  without  premeditation,  he  says,  on  a 
carefully  written  essay,  made  him  feel  as  he 
should  if,  at  a  chemical  lecture,  somebody  should 
pass  around  a  precipitate,  and  when  the  mix 
ture  had  become  turbid  should  request  him  to 
give  his  opinion  concerning  it.  The  fallacies 
continually  rising  in  such  a  discussion  from 


214  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  want  of  a  proper  understanding  of  terms, 
always  made  him  feel  as  if  quicksilver  had 
been  substituted  for  the  odinary  silver  of 
speech.  The  only  true  way  to  criticize  such 
an  essay  was  to  take  it  home,  slowly  assimilate 
it,  and  not  talk  about  it  until  it  had  become 
a  part  of  one's  self. 

Edward,  the  youngest  son  of  Doctor  Holmes, 
has  chosen  the  same  profession  as  his  brother. 

It  is  at  Mrs.  Sargent's  home,  at  Beverly 
Farms,  that  Doctor  Holmes  now  passes  his 
summers.  The  pretty,  cream-colored  house 
with  its  broad  veranda  in  front,  can  be  easily 
seen  from  the  station,  but  to  appreciate  the 
charms  of  this  pleasant  country  home,  one 
should  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  cosey  interior. 

Robert  Rantoul,  John  T.  Morse  and  Henry 
Lee  are  neighbors  of  Doctor  Holmes  at  Bev 
erly  Farms,  and  Lucy  Larcom's  home  is  not 
far  distant. 

After  eighteen  years'  residence  at  No.  8 
Montgomery  Place,  Doctor  Holmes  moved  to 
164  Charles  street,  where  he  lived  about  twelve 
years.  His  present  home  in  Boston  is  at  No. 
296  Beacon  street. 

"  We     die     out    of    houses,"    says    the     poet, 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  215 

"just   as  we   die   out   of  our   bodies.      .      .     . 
The   body   has    been    called    the  house    we   live 
in  ;    the   house   is  quite  as    much    the  body   we 

live  in The  soul  of  a  man  has  a 

series  of  concentric  envelopes  around  it,  like 
the  core  of  an  onion,  or  the  innermost  of  a 
nest  of  boxes.  First,  he  has  his  natural  gar 
ment  of  flesh  and  blood.  Then  his  artificial 
integuments,  with  their  true  skin  of  solid  stuffs, 
their  cuticle  of  lighter  tissues,  and  their  vari 
ously-tinted  pigments.  Thirdly,  his  domicile,  be 
it  a  single  chamber  or  a  stately  mansion. 
And  then  the  whole  visible  world,  in  which 
Time  buttons  him  up  as  in  a  loose,  outside 
wrapper.  •  .  .  .  Our  houses  shape  them 
selves  palpably  on  our  inner  and  outer  nature. 
See  a  householder  breaking  up  and  you  will 
be  sure  of  it.  There  is  a  shell  fish  which 
builds  all  manner  of  smaller  shells  into  the 
walls  of  its  own.  A  house  is  never  a  home 
until  we  have  crusted  it  with  the  spoils  of  a 
hundred  lives  besides  those  of  our  own  past. 
See  what  these  are  and  you  can  tell  what  the 
occupant  is." 

The   poet's    present    home    on    Beacon    street 
well    illustrates  the    above   extract.     I    shall    not 


216  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

soon  forget  the  charming  picture  that  greeted 
me,  one  gray  winter  day,  as  I  was  ushered 
into  the  poet's  cheerful  study.  A  blazing  wood 
fire  was  crackling  on  the  hearth,  and  the 
ruddy  glow  was  reflected  now  on  the  stately 
features  of  "  Dorothy  Q.,"  now  on  the  Copley 
portrait  of  old  Doctor  Cooper,  and  now 
with  a  peculiar  Rembrandt  effect  upon  the 
low  'rows  of  books,  the  orderly  desk,  and  the 
kind,  cordial  face  of  the  poet  himself.  An  "  Em 
erson  Calendar"  was  hanging  over  the  mantel, 
and  after  calling  my  attention  to  the  excellent 
picture  upon  it  of  the  old  home  at  Concord, 
Doctor  Holmes  began  to  talk  of  his  brother 
poet  in  terms  of  warmest  affection. 

As  he  afterwards  remarked  at  the  Nineteenth 
Century  Club,  the  difference  between  Emer 
son's  poetry  and  that  of  others  with  whom  he 
might  naturally  be  compared,  was  that  of  alge 
bra  and  arithmetic.  The  fascination  of  his 
poems  was  in  their  spiritual  depth  and  sin 
cerity  and  their  all  pervading  symbolism.  Em 
erson's  writings  in  prose  and  verse  were  worthy 
of  all  honor  and  admiration,  but  his  manhood 
was  the  noblest  of  all  his  high  endowments. 
A  bigot  here  and  there  might  have  avoided 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  217 

meeting  him,  but  if  He  who  knew  what  was 
in  men  had  wandered  from  door  to  door  in 
New  England,  as  of  old  in  Palestine,  one  of 
the  thresholds  which  "  those  blessed  feet " 
would  have  crossed  would  have  been  that  of 
the  lovely  and  quiet  home  of  Emerson. 

The  view  from  the  broad  bay  window  in  Doc 
tor  Holmes'  study,  recalled  his  own  description : 

Through  my  north  window,   in  the   wintry  weather, 

My   airy  oriel   on  the   river  shore, 
I   watch   the   sea-fowl   as  they   flock   together, 

Where  late  the  boatman  flashed   his  dripping  oar. 

The  gull,  high  floating,  like  a  sloop  unladen, 
Lets  the  loose  water  waft  him  as  it  will ; 

The  duck,  round-breasted  as  a  rustic  maiden, 
Paddles  and  plunges,  busy,  busy  still. 

A  microscopical  apparatus  placed  under  an 
other  window  in  the  study,  reminds  the 
visitor  of  the  "  man  of  science,"  while  the 
books  — 

A  mingled  race,  the  wreck  of  chance  and  time 
That  talk  all   tongues  and  breathe  of  every  clime  — 

speak  in  eloquent  numbers  of  the  "  man  of 
letters." 


218  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

There  is  the  Plato  on  the  lower  shelf,  with  the 
inscription,  Ezra  Stiles,  1766,  to  which  Doctor 
Holmes  alludes  in  his  tribute  to  the  New  England 
clergy.  Here  is  the  hand-lens  imported  by  the 
Reverend  John  Prince,  of  Salem,  and  just  before 
us,  in  the  "unpretending  row  of  local  historians," 
is  Jeremy  Belknap's  History  of  New  Hampshire, 
"  in  the  pages  of  which,"  says  Doctor  Holmes, 
"may  be  found  a  chapter  contributed  in  part 
by  the  most  remarkable  man  in  many  respects, 
among  all  the  older  clergymen,  —  preacher,  law 
yer,  physician,  astronomer,  botanist,  entomologist, 
explorer,  colonist,  legislator  in  State  and  national 
governments,  and  only  not  seated  on  the  bench 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  a  Territory  because  he 
declined  the  office  when  Washington  offered  it 
to  him.  This  manifold  individual,"  adds  Doctor 
Holmes,  "  was  the  minister  of  Hamilton,  a  pleas 
ant  little  town  in  Essex  County,  Massachusetts, 
the  Reverend  Manasseh  Cutler." 

Here  is  the  Aetius  found  one  never-to-be-for 
gotten  rainy  day,  in  that  dingy  bookshop  in 
Lyons,  and  here  the  vellum-bound  Tulpius,  "my 
only  reading,"  says  Doctor  Holmes,  "  when  im 
prisoned  in  quarantine  at  Marseilles,  so  that  the 
two  hundred  an4  twenty-eight  cases  he  has 


Dr.   Holmes'  Library.  Beacon  St. 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  219 

recorded  are,  many  of  them,  to  this  day  still 
fresh  in  my  memory."  Here,  too,  is  the  ScJienck- 
ius,  —  "the  folio  filled  with  casus  rariores,  which 
had  strayed  in  among  the  rubbish  of  the  book 
stall  on  the  boulevard — and  here  the  noble  old 
Vesalins,  with  its  grand  frontispiece  not  unworthy 
of  Titian,  and  the  fine  old  Ambroise  Parit,  long 
waited  for  even  in  Paris  and  long  ago,  and  the 
colossal  Spigelius,  with  his  eviscerated  beauties, 
and  Dutch  Bidloo  with  its  miracles  of  fine 
engraving  and  bad  dissection,  and  Italian  Mas- 
cagni,  the  despair  of  all  would-be  imitators,  and 
pre-Adamite  John  de  Ketam,  and  antediluvian 
Berengarius  Carpensis"  and  many  other  rare 
volumes,  dear  to  the  heart  of  every  bibliophile. 

Glancing  again  from  the  window,  I  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  West  Boston  Bridge,  and  recall 
the  poet's  description  of  the  "  crunching  of  ice 
at  the  edges  of  the  river  as  the  tide  rises  and 
falls,  the  little  cluster  of  tent-like  screens  on 
the  frozen  desert,  the  excitement  of  watching 
the  springy  hoops,  the  mystery  of  drawing  up 
life  from  silent,  unseen  depths  "  With  his  opera 
glass  he  watches  the  boys  and  men,  black  and 
white,  fishing  over  the  rails  of  the  bridge  "as 
hopefully  as  if  the  river  were  full  of  salmon." 


220  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

At  certain  seasons,  he  observes,  there  will 
now  and  then  be  captured  a  youthful  and  inex 
perienced  codfish,  always,  however,  of  quite  trivial 
dimensions.  The  fame  of  the  exploit  has  no 
sooner  gone  abroad  than  the  enthusiasts  of  the 
art  come  flocking  down  to  the  river  and  cast 
their  lines  in  side  by  side,  until  they  look  like  a 
row  of  harp-strings  for  number.  "  That  a  codfish 
is  once  in  a  while  caught,"  says  Doctor  Holmes, 
"I  have  asserted  to  be  a  fact;  but  I  have 
often  watched  the  anglers,  and  do  not  remember 
ever  seeing  one  drawn  from  the  water,  or  even 
any  unequivocal  symptom  of  a  bite.  The 
spring  sculpin  and  the  flabby,  muddy  flounder 
are  the  common  rewards  of  the  angler's  toil. 

The  silhouette  figures  on  the  white  back 
ground  enliven  the  winter  landscape,  but  now 
the  blazing  log  on  the  hearthstone  rolls  over 
and  the  whole  study  is  aglow  with  light !  Truly 
"  winter  is  a  cheerful  season  to  people  who  have 
open  fireplaces ; "  and  who  will  not  agree  with 
our  poet-philosopher  when  he  says,  "  A  house 
without  these  is  like  a  face  without  eyes,  and 
that  never  smiles.  I  have  seen  respectability 
and  amiability  grouped  over  the  air-tight  stove  ; 
I  have  seen  virtue  and  intelligence  hovering 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  221 

over  the  register ;  but  I  have  never  seen  true 
happiness  in  a  family  circle  where  the  faces 
were  not  illuminated  by  the  blaze  of  an  open 
fireplace." 

A  well-known  journalist  writes  as  follows  of 
Doctor  Holmes  "at  home." 

"All  who  pay  their  respects  to  the  distin 
guished  Autocrat  will  find  the  genial,  merry 
gentleman  whose  form  and  kindly  greeting  all 
admirers  have  anticipated  while  reading  his 
sparkling  poems.  He  is  the  perfect  essence  of 
wit  and  hospitality  —  courteous,  amiable  and 
entertaining  to  a  degree  which  is  more  easily 
remembered  than  imparted  or  described.  If 
the  caller  expects  to  find  blue-blood  snobbish 
ness  at  296  Beacon  street,  he  will  be  disap 
pointed.  It  is  one  of  the  most  elegant  and 
charming  residences  on  that  broad  and  fash'on- 
able  thoroughfare,  but  far  less  pretentious,  both 
inwardly  and  outwardly,  than  many  of  the 
others.  For  an  uninterrupted  period  of  forty- 
seven  years,  Doctor  Holmes  has  lived  in 
Boston,  and  for  the  last  dozen  years  he  has 
occupied  his  present  residence  on  Beacon 
street. 

"The   chief  point  of   attraction  in  the  present 


222  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

residence — for  the  visitor  as  well  as  the  host — 
is  the  magnificent  and  spacious  library,  which 
may  be  more  aptly  termed  the  Autocrat's  work 
shop.  It  is  up  one  flight,  and  seemingly  occu 
pies  the  entire  rear  half  of  the  whole  build 
ing  on  this  floor.  It  is  a  very  inviting  room 
in  every  respect,  and  from  the  spacious  win 
dows  overlooking  the  broad  expanse  of  the 
Charles  River,  there  can  be  had  an  extensive 
view  of  the  surrounding  suburbs  in  the  north 
erly,  eastern  and  western  directions.  On  a 
clear  day  there  can  be  more  or  less  distinctly 
described  the  cities  and  towns  of  Cambridge, 
Arlington,  Medford,  Somerville,  Maiden,  Revere, 
Everett,  Chelsea,  Charlestown  and  East  Boston. 
Even  in  the  picture  can  be  recognized  the 
lofty  tower  of  the  Harvard  Memorial  Hall, 
which  is  but  a  few  steps  from  the  doctor's 
birthplace  and  first  home.  Arthur  Oilman,  in 
his  admirable  pen  and  pencil  sketches  of  the 
homes  of  the  American  poets,  makes  a  happy 
and  appropriate  allusion  to  the  Autocrat's  library. 
'The  ancient  Hebrew,'  he  says,  'always  had  a 
window  open  toward  Jerusalem,  the  city  about 
which  his  most  cherished  hopes  and  memories 
clustered,  and  this  window  gives  its  owner  the 


THE  HOME  CIRCLE.  223 

pleasure  of  looking  straight  to  the  place  of 
his  birth,  and  thus  of  freshening  all  the  happy 
memories  of  a  successful  life.' 

"  In  renewing  his  old-time  acquaintance  with 
the  Atlantic  family  circle,  the  Autocrat  recog 
nized  the  modern  invention  of  the  journalistic 
interviewer,  and  submitted  some  plans  for  his 
regulation,  to  be  considered  by  the  various 
local  governments.  His  idea  is  that  the  inter 
viewer  is  a  product  of  our  civilization,  one 
who  does  for  the  living  what  the  undertaker 
does  for  the  dead,  taking  such  liberties  as  he 
chooses  with  the  subject  of  his  mental  and 
conversational  manipulations,  whom  he  is  to 
arrange  for  public  inspection.  '  The  interview 
system  has  its  legitimate  use,'  says  Doctor 
Holmes,  '  and  is  often  a  convenience  to  pol 
iticians,  and  may  even  gratify  the  vanity  and 
serve  the  interests  of  an  author.'  He  very 
properly  believes,  however,  that  in  its  abuse  it 
is  an  infringement  of  the  liberty  of  the  private 
citizen  to  be  ranked  with  the  edicts  of  the 
council  of  ten,  the  decrees  of  the  star  cham 
ber,  the  lettres  de  cachet,  and  the  visits  of 
the  Inquisition.  The  interviewer,  if  excluded, 
becomes  an  enemy,  and  has  the  columns  of  a 


224  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

newspaper  at  his  service  in  which  to  revenge 
himself.  If  admitted,  the  interviewed  is  at  the 
mercy  of  the  interviewer's  memory,  if  he  is 
the  best  meaning  of  men  ;  of  his  accuracy,  if 
he  is  careless ;  of  his  malevolence,  if  he  is 
ill-disposed ;  of  his  prejudices,  if  he  has  any, 
and  of  his  sense  of  propriety,  at  any  rate. 

"Doctor  Holmes  humorously  suggests  the  fol 
lowing  restrictions :  '  A  licensed  corps  of  in 
terviewers,  to  be  appointed  by  the  municipal 
authorities,  each  interviewer  to  wear,  in  a 
conspicuous  position,  a  number  and  a  badge, 
for  which  the  following  emblems  and  inscrip 
tions  are  suggested  :  Zephyrus,  with  his  lips 
at  the  ear  of  Boreas,  who  holds  a  speaking 
trumpet,  signifying  that  what  is  said  by  the 
interviewed  in  a  whisper  will  be  shouted  to  the 
world  by  the  interviewer  through  that  brazen 
instrument.  For  mottoes,  either  of  the  follow 
ing  :  Fcenmn  lialct  in  cornu ;  Hnnc  tu  Romane 
caveto.  No  person  to  be  admitted  to  the 
corps  of  interviewers  without  a  strict  pre 
liminary  examination.  The  candidate  to  be 
proved  free  from  color  blindness  and  ambly- 
opia,  ocular  and  mental  strabismus,  double 
refraction  of  memory,  kleptomania,  mendacity 


T1IE  I1OME  CIRCLE.  225 

of  more  than  average  dimensions,  and  ten 
dency  to  alcholtc  endosmosis.  His  moral  and 
religious  character  to  be  vouched  for  by  three 
orthodox  clergymen  of  the  same  belief,  and 
as  many  deacons  who  agree  with  them  and 
each  other.  All  reports  to  be  submitted  to 
the  interviewed,  and  the  proofs  thereof  to  be 
corrected  and  sanctioned  by  him  before  being 
given  to  the  public.  Until  the  above  provi 
sions  are  carried  out  no  record  of  an  alleged 
interview  to  be  considered  as  anything  more 
than  the  untrustworthy  gossip  of  an  irrespon 
sible  impersonality.'  ' 

"What  business  have  young  scribblers  to 
send  me  their  verses  and  ask  my  opinion  of 
the  stuff  ? "  said  Doctor  Holmes  one  day, 
annoyed  by  the  officiousness  of  certain  would- 
be  aspirants  to  literary  fame.  "They  have 
no  more  right  to  ask  than  they  have  to 
stop  me  on  the  street,  run  out  their  tongues, 
and  ask  what  the  matter  is  with  their 
stomachs,  and  what  they  shall  take  as  a 
remedy."  At  another  time  he  made  the  re 
mark  :  "  Everybody  that  writes  a  book  must 
needs  send  me  a  copy.  It's  very  good 
of  them,  of  course,  but  they're  not  all  sue- 


226  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

cessful  attempts  at  bookmaking,  and  most  of 
them  are  relegated  to  my  hospital  for  sick 
books  up-stairs." 

But  once  a  young  writer  sent  from  Cali 
fornia  a  sample  of  his  poetry,  and  asked 
Holmes  if  it  was  worth  while  for  him  to 
keep  on  writing.  It  was  evident  that  the 
doctor  was  impressed  by  something  decidedly 
original  in  the  style  of  the  writer,  for  he 
wrote  back  that  he  should  keep  on,  by  all 
means. 

Some  time  afterward  a  gentleman  called  at 
the  home  of  Professor  Holmes  in  Boston  and 
asked  him  if  he  remembered  the  incident. 
"  I  do,  indeed,"  replied  Holmes.  •  "  Well,"  said 
his  visitor,  who  was  none  other  than  Bret 
Harte,  "  I  am  the  man." 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  227 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

LOVE     OF     NATURE. 

IT  is  city-life,  Boston-life,  in  fact,  that  forms 
the  fitting  frame  of  any  pen-picture  one 
might  draw  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  and  yet 
even  his  prose  writings  are  full  of  all  a  poet's 
love  for  country  sights  and  sounds./  Listen,  for 
instance,  to  this  rich  word-picture  of  the  opening 
spring :  "  A  flock  of  wild  geese  wedging  their 
way  northward,  with  strange,  far-off  clamor,  are 
the  heralds  of  April ;  the  flowers  are  opening 
fast ;  the  leaves  are  springing  bright  green  upon 
the  currant  bushes  ;  dark,  almost  livid,  upon  the 
lilacs ;  the  grass  is  growing  apace,  the  plants 
are  coming  up  in  the  garden  beds,  and  the  chil 
dren  are  thinking  of  May-day. 

The  birds  come  pouring  in  with  May. 
Wrens,  brown  thrushes,  the  various  kinds  of  swal 
lows,  orioles,  cat-birds,  golden  robins,  bobo'links, 
whippoorwills,  cuckoos,  yellow-birds,  humming- 


228  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

birds,  are  busy  in  establishing  their  new  house 
holds.  The  bumble-bee  comes  in  with  his  '  mel 
low,  breezy  bass,'  to  swell  the  song  of  the  busy 
minstrels. 

"And   now  June  comes   in  with   roses   in   her 

hand the   azalea  —  wild    honeysuckle 

—  is  sweetening  the  road-sides;  the  laurels  are 
beginning  to  blow,  the  white  lilies  are  getting 
ready  to  open,  the  fireflies  are  seen  now  and 
then  flitting  across  the  darkness ;  the  katydids, 
the  grasshoppers,  the  crickets,  make  themselves 
heard  ;  the  bull-frogs  utter  their  tremendous 
voices,  and  the  full  chorus  of  birds  makes  the 
air  vocal  with, 

How  vlike     ThoreauJ  the     following     passage 
reads : 

~""O,  for  a  huckleberry  pasture  to  wander  in, 
with  labyrinths  of  taller  bushes,  with  bayberry 
leaves  at  hand  to  pluck  and  press  and  smell  of, 
and  sweet  fern,  its  fragrant  rival,  growing  near ! 
.  .  .  .  I  wonder  if  others  have  noticed  what 
an  imitative  fruit  the  blackberry  is.  I  have  tasted 
the  strawberry,  the  pine-apple,  and  I  do  not  know 
how  many  other  flavors  in  it  —  if  you  think  a  lit 
tle,  and  have  read  Darwin,  and  Huxley,  perhaps 
you  will  believe  that  it,  and  all  the  fruits  it 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  229 

tastes  of,  may  have  come  from  a  common  pro 
genitor." 

And  there  is  the  poet's  beautiful  picture  of 
Indian  summer. 

"  It  is  the  time  to  be  in  the  woods  or  on 
the  seashore,  —  a  sweet  season  that  should  be 
given  to  lonely  walks,  to  stumbling  about  in  old 
churchyards,  plucking  on  the  way  the  aromatic 
silvery 'herb  everlasting,  and  smelling  at  its  dry 
flower  until  it  etherizes  the  soul  into  aimless  rev 
eries  outside  of  space  and  time.  There  is  little 
need  of  painting  the  still,  warm,  misty,  dreamy 
Indian  summer  in  words  ;  there  are  many  states 
that  have  no  articulate  vocabulary,  and  are  only 
to  be  reproduced  by  music,  and  the  mood  this 
season  produces  is  of  that  nature.  By  and  by, 
when  the  white  man  is  thoroughly  Indianized 
(if  he  can  bear  the  process),  some  native  Hay- 
den  will  perhaps  turn  the  Indian  summer  into 
the  loveliest  andante  of  the  new  '  Creation.'  ' 

And  again  :  "  To  those  who  know  the  Indian 
summer  of  our  Northern  States,  it  is  needless  to 
describe  the  influence  it  exerts  on  the  senses 
and  the  soul.  The  stillness  of  the  landscape 
in  that  beautiful  time  is  as  if  the  planet  were 
sleeping  like  a  top,  before  it  begins  to  rock  with 


230  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  storms  of  autumn.  All  natures  seem  to  find 
themselves  more  truly  in  its  light ;  love  grows 
more  tender,  religion  more  spiritual,  memory 
sees  farther  back  into  the  past,  grief  revisits  its 
mossy  marbles,  the  poet  harvests  the  ripe 
thoughts  which  he  will  tie  in  sheaves  of  verse 
by  his  winter  fireside." 

At  another  time,  when  revisiting  the  scenes  of 
his  old  schooldays  at  Andover,  he  gives  us  the 
following  vivid  description  of  mountain  scenery  : 

"Far  to  the  north  and  west  the  mountains  of 
New  Hampshire  lifted  their  summits  in  a  long 
encircling  ridge  of  pale-blue  waves.  The  day 
was  clear,  and  every  mound  and  peak  traced  its 
outline  with  perfect  definition  against  the  sky. 
.  .  .  .  I  have  been  by  the  seaside  now  and 
then,  but  the  sea  is  constantly  busy  with  its 
own  affairs,  running  here  and  there,  listening  to 
what  the  winds  have  to  say,  and  getting  angry 
with  them,  always  indifferent,  often  insolent,  and 
ready  to  do  a  mischief  to  those  who  seek  its 
companionship.  But  these  still,  serene,  unchang 
ing  mountains,  —  Monadnock,  Kearsarge,  —  what 
memories  that  name  recalls!  and  the  others,  the 
dateless  Pyramids  of  New  England,  the  eternal 
monuments  of  her  ancient  race,  around  which 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  231 

cluster  the  homes  of  so  many  of  her  bravest 
and  hardiest  children,  I  can  never  look  at  them 
without  feeling  that,  vast  and  remote  and  awful 
as  they  are,  there  is  a  kind  of  inward  heat  and 
muffled  throb  in  their  stony  cores,  that  brings 
them  into  a  vague  sort  of  sympathy  with  human 
hearts.  How  delightful  all  those  reminiscences, 
as  he  wanders,  "  the  ghost  of  a  boy  "  by  his  side, 
now  by  the  old  elm  that  held,  buried  in  it  by 
growth,  iron  rings  to  keep  the  Indians  from  de 
stroying  it  with  their  tomahawks ;  and  now 
through  the  old  playground  sown  with  memories 
of  the  time  when  he  was  young. 

UA  kind  of  romance  gilds  for  me,"  he  says, 
"the  sober  tableland  of  that  cold  New  England 
hill  where  I  came  a  slight,  immature  boy,  in 
contact  with  a  world  so  strange  to  me,  and  des 
tined  to  leave  such  mingled  and  lasting  impres 
sions.  I  looked  across  the  valley  to  the  hillside 
where  Methuen  hung  suspended,  and  dreamed  of 
its  wooded  seclusion  as  a  village  paradise.  I 
tripped  lightly  down  the  long  northern  slope 
with  fact/is  dcscensus  on  my  lips,  and  toiled  up 
again,  repeating  sed  revocare  gradum.  I  wan 
dered  in  the  autumnal  woods  that  crown  the 
*  Indian  Ridge,'  much  wondering  at  that  vast 


232  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

enbankment,  which  we  young  philosophers  be 
lieved  with  the  vulgar  to  be  of  aboriginal  work 
manship,  not  less  curious,  perhaps,  since  we  call 
it  an  escar,  and  refer  it  to  alluvial  agencies. 
The  little  Shawsheen  was  our  swimming-school, 
and  the  great  Merrimac,  the  right  arm  of  four 
toiling  cities,  was  within  reach  of  a  morning 
stroll." 

Nor  does  he  forget  to  recall  a  visit  to  Haver- 
hill  with  his  room-mate,  when  he  saw  the  mighty 
bridge  over  the  Merrimac  that  defied  the  ice- 
rafts  of  the  river,  and  the  old  meeting-house 
door  with  the  bullet-hole  in  it,  through  which 
the  minister,  Benjamin  Rolfe,  was  shot  by  the 
Indians.  "  What  a  vision  it  was,"  he  exclaims, 
"when  I  awoke  in  the  morning  to  see  the  fog  on 
the  river  seeming  as  if  it  wrapped  the  towers 
and  spires  of  a  great  city  !  for  such  was  my  fancy, 
and  whether  it  was  a  mirage  of  youth,  or  a  fan 
tastic  natural  effect,  I  hate  to  inquire  too  nicely." 

Like  all  poets,  Doctor  Holmes  has  a  passionate 
love  for  flowers,  and  with  a  delight  that  is  most 
heartily  shared  by  the  sympathetic  reader,  he 
thus  recalls  the  old  garden  belonging  to  the  gam- 
brel-roofed  house  in  Cambridge  : 

"There  were  old  lilac  bushes,  at  the  right  of 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  233 

the  entrance,  and  in  the  corner  at  the  left  that 
remarkable  moral  pear-tree,  which  gave  me  one 
of  my  first  lessons  in  life.  Its  fruit  never  ripened 
but  always  rotted  at  the  core  just  before  it  began 
to  grow  mellow.  It  was  a  vulgar  plebeian  speci 
men,  at  best,  and  was  set  there,  no  doubt,  only  to 
preach  its  annual  sermon,  a  sort  of  '  Dudleian  Lec 
ture  '  by  a  country  preacher  of  small  parts.  But 
in  the  northern  border  was  a  high-bred  Saint 
Michael  pear-tree,  which  taught  a  lesson  that  all  of 
gentle  blood  might  take  to  heart ;  for  its  fruit  used 
to  get  hard  and  dark,  and  break  into  unseemly 
cracks,  so  that  when  the  lord  of  the  harvest  came 
for  it,  it  was  like  those  rich  men's  sons  we  see 
too  often,  who  have  never  ripened,  but  only 
rusted,  hardened  and  shrunken.  We  had 
peaches,  lovely  nectarines,  and  sweet,  white 
grapes,  growing  and  coming  to  kindly  maturity 
in  those  days;  we  should  hardly  expect  them 
now,  and  yet  there  is  no  obvious  change  of  cli 
mate.  As  for  the  garden-beds,  they  were  cared 
for  by  the  Jonathan  or  Ephraim  of  the  household, 
sometimes  assisted  by  one  Rule,  a  little  old 
Scotch  gardener,  with  a  stippled  face  and  a  lively 
temper.  Nothing  but  old-fashioned  flowers  in 
them — hyacinths,  pushing  their  green  beaks 


234  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

through  as  soon  as  the  snow  was  gone,  or  earlier 
tulips,  coming  up  in  the  shape  of  sugar  '  cockles,' 
or  cornucopiae,  one  was  almost  tempted  to 
look  to  see  whether  nature  had  not  packed 
one  of  those  two-line  'sentiments,'  we  remem 
ber  so  well  in  each  of  them ;  peonies,  butting 
their  way  bluntly  through  the  loosened 
earth ;  flower-de-luces  (so  I  will  call  them,  not 
otherwise) ;  lilies ;  roses,  damask,  white,  blush, 
cinnamon  (these  names  served  us  then) ;  lark 
spurs,  lupins,  and  gorgeous  holyhocks. 

"  With  these  uppej-class  plants  were  blended, 
in  republican  fellowship,  the  useful  vegetables  of 
the  working  sort;  —  beets,  handsome  with 
dark-red  leaves ;  carrots,  with  their  elegant 
filigree  foliage,  parsnips  that  cling  to  the  earth 
like  mandrakes  ;  radishes,  illustrations  of  total 
depravity,  a  prey  to  every  evil  underground 
emissary  of  the  powers  of  darkness ;  onions, 
never  easy  until  they  are  out  of  bed,  so  to 
speak,  a  communicative  and  companionable  veg 
etable,  with  a  real  genius  for  soups ;  squash 
vines  with  their  generous  fruits,  the  winter  ones 
that  will  hang  up  '  ag'in  the  chimbly '  by  and 
by  —  the  summer  ones,  vase  like,  as  Haw 
thorne  described  them,  with  skins  so  white 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  235 

and  delicate,  when  they  are  yet  new-born,  that 
one  thinks  of  little  sucking  pigs  turned  vege 
tables,  like  Daphne  into  a  laurel,  and  then 
of  tender  human  infancy,  which  Charles  Lamb's 
favorite  so  calls  to  mind; — these,  with  mel 
ons,  promising  as  '  first  scholars,'  but  apt  to  put 
off  ripening  until  the  frost  came  and  blasted 
their  vines  and  leaves,  as  if  it  had  been  a 
shower  of  boiling  water,  were  among  the  cus 
tomary  growths  of  the  Garden." 

Then  follows,  in  these  charming  reminiscences, 
an  account  of  the  reconstruction  of  the  dear 
old  Garden. 

"Consuls  Madisonius  and  Monrovious  left  the 
seat  of  office,  and  Consuls  Johannes  Quincius,  and 
Andreas,  and  Martinus,  and  the  rest,  followed 
in  their  turn,  until  the  good  Abraham  sat  in 
the  curule  chair.  In  the  meantime  changes 
had  been  going  on  under  our  old  gambrel  roof, 
and  the  Garden  had  been  suffered  to  relapse 
slowly  into  a  state  of  wild  nature.  The 
haughty  flower-de-luces,  the  curled  hyacinths, 
the  perfumed  roses,  had  yielded  their  place  to 
suckers  from  locust-trees,  to  milkweed,  burdock, 
plantain,  sorrel,  purslane  ;  the  gravel  walks, 
which  were  to  nature  as  rents  in  her  green 


236  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

garment,  had  been  gradually  darned  over  with 
the  million  threaded  needles  of  her  grasses  until 
nothing  was  left  to  show  that  a  garden  had 
been  there. 

"  But  the  Garden  still  existed  in  my  mem 
ory  ;  the  walks  were  all  mapped  out  there, 
and  the  place  of  every  herb  and  flower  was 
laid  down  as  if  on  a  chart. 

"  By  that  pattern  I  reconstructed  the  Gar 
den,  lost  for  a  whole  generation  as  much  as 
Pompeii  was  lost,  and  in  the  consulate  of  our 
good  Abraham  it  was  once  more  as  it  had 
been  in  the  days  of  my  childhood.  It  was 
not  much  to  look  upon  for  a  stranger ;  but 
when  the  flowers  came  up  in  their  old  places, 
the  effect  on  me  was  something  like  what 
the  widow  of  Nain  may  have  felt  when  her 
dead  son  rose  on  his  bier  and  smiled  upon 
her. 

"  Nature  behaved  admirably,  and  sent  me 
back  all  the  little  tokens  of  her  affection  she 
had  kept  so  long.  The  same  delegates  from 
the  underground  fauna  ate  up  my  early  rad 
ishes  ;  I  think  I  should  have  been  disap 
pointed  if  they  had  not.  The  same  buff-colored 
bugs  devoured  my  roses  that  I  remembered  of 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  237 

old.  The  aphis  and  the  caterpillar  and  the 
squash-bug  were  cordial  as  ever;  just  as  if 
nothing  had  happened  to  produce  a  coolness 
or  entire  forgetfulness  between  us.  But  the 
butterflies  came  back  too,  and  the  bees  and 
the  birds." 

Says   a   well-known   writer : 

"  Though  born  and  reared  beneath  the  shadow 
of  the  great  city,  yet  Doctor  Holmes  has  ever 
found  great  delight  in  spending  a  portion  of 
each  year  in  the  country.  The  last  few  sum 
mers  he  has  made  his  home  at  Beverly  Farms, 
but  from  1849  to  l%$6>  inclusive,  his  summer 
home  was  in  Pittsfield,  in  Berkshire  County. 
His  recollections  of  the  scenes  and  people  in 
that  charming  town  are  pleasant  and  abundant. 
The  villa  which  he  built  was  upon  a  round 
knoll,  commanding  a  fine  view  of  the  whole 
circle  of  Berkshire  mountains,  and  of  the  Housa- 
tonic,  winding  in  its  serpentine  way  through 
the  fertile  meadows  and  valleys  to  the  sound 
of  Long  Island.  Yielding  to  his  own  good 
nature  and  the  soft  persuasion  of  a  committee 
of  Pittsfield  ladies,  Doctor  Holmes  once  con 
tributed  a  couple  of  poems  to  a  fancy  fair 
which  was  being  held  in  the  town  during  his 


238  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

residence  there.  They  do  not  appear  in  any 
of  the  published  collections,  which  is  the  one 
reason,  above  all  others,  why  we  print  them 
now.  Each  of  the  poems  was  inclosed  in  an 
envelope  bearing  a  motto ;  and  the  right  to  a 
second  choice,  guided  by  these,  was  disposed 
of  in  a  raffle,  to  the  no  small  emolument  of 
the  objects  of  the  fair.  The  two  pieces  are 
evefi  "lis  day  represented  by  at  least  a 

d    of    the    quaint  •  ecclesiastical    her- 
h    illuminates    the    gorgeous    chancel 
window   of   the    St.    Stephen's    church    in    Pitts- 
field.    The  motto  of  the  first  envelope  ran  thus  : 

Jaith  is   the   conquering  angels'   crosvn; 

Who   hopes  for  grace   must   ask   it; 
Look   shrewdly  ere   you   lay  me   down ; 

I'm  Portia's  leaden  casket. 

The   following  verses    were   found   within  : 

Fair  lady,   whosoe'er   thou   art, 
Turn   this  poor   leaf  with   tenderest   care, 

And  —  hush,  oh,   hush   thy   beating   heart ; 
The  one  thou  lovest  will   be   there. 

Alas,  not  loved  by   thee  alone, 

Thine   idol   ever  prone   to  range; 
To-day  all   thine,  to-morrow   flown, 

Frail   thing,   that   every   hour   may   change. 


LOVE  OF  NATURE.  239 

Yet,   when   that   truant   course   is   done, 

If  thy   lost  wanderer   reappear, 
Press   to   thy  heart   the   only   one 

That   nought  can   make   more   truly   dear. 

Within  this  paper  was  a  smaller  envelope 
containing  a  one  dollar  bill,  and  this  explana 
tion  of  the  poet's  riddle: 

Fair  lady,   lift  thine   eyes  and    tell 

If  this   is  not  a   truthful  letter ; 
This   is  the    ( i )   thou  lovest   well, 

And  nought  (o)  can   make   thee  love   it  better  (xo). 

Though   fickle,  do   not   think  it   strange 
That   such   a  friend   is   worth  possessing; 

For  one   that   gold  can   never  change 
Is   Heaven's  own   dearest  earthly   blessing. 


240  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL. 

UPON  the  seventeenth  of  October,  1883,  the 
centennial  anniversary  of  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  the  new  building  upon  the 
Back  Bay  was  dedicated.  The  fine,  commo 
dious  structure  is  situated  upon  the  corner 
of  Boylston  and  Exeter  streets,  and  is  at 
nearly  equal  distances  from  the  Massachusetts 
General  Hospital,  the  City  Hospital,  the  Bos 
ton  Dispensary  and  the  Children's  Hospital 
with  their  stores  of  clinical  material,  available 
for  the  purposes  of  teaching.  Close  by,  also, 
are  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology, 
the  museums  of  the  Society  of  Natural  His 
tory  and  of  Fine  Arts,  and  the  Medical  Li 
brary  Association.  The  building  has  a  front 
age  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-two  feet 
toward  the  north  on  Boylston  street,  and  of 
ninety  feet  toward  the  west  on  Exeter  street, 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  241 

and  its  corner  position,  together  with  the 
reservation  of  a  large  open  area  on  the  east, 
will  always  insure  good  light  and  good  air. 

The  dedication  exercises  were  divided  into 
two  parts,  the  opening  addresses  being  given 
in  Huntington  Hall,  at  the  Institute  of  Tech 
nology,  and  the  remainder  of  the  programme 
in  the  new  building.  Upon  the  platform,  in 
Huntington  Hall,  were  seated  President  Eliot, 
of  Harvard  University,  the  faculty  of  the 
Medical  School,  and  numerous  invited  guests. 
Upon  the  walls  just  back  of  the  platform, 
against  a  background  of  maroon-colored  dra 
pery,  and  directly  over  the  head  of  the  origi 
nal,  hung  a  portrait  of  Professor  Oliver  Wen 
dell  Holmes.  Beneath  this  portrait  was  a  fine 
marble  bust  of  Professor  Henry  J.  Bigelow, 
who  was  seated  beside  Doctor  Holmes. 

President  Eliot  opened  the  exercises  with 
the  interesting  address  which  follows : 

"  We  are  met  to  celebrate  the  beginning  of 
the  second  century  of  the  Medical  School's 
existence,  and  the  simultaneous  completion  of 
its  new  building.  It  is  a  hundred  years  since 
John  Warren,  Benjamin  Waterhouse  and  Aaron 
Dexter  were  installed  as  professors  of  anatomy 


242  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

and  surgery,  theory  and  practice,  and  materia 
medico,  respectively,  and  without  the  aid  of 
collections  or  hospitals  began  to  lecture  in 
some  small,  rough  rooms  in  the  basement  of 
Harvard  Hall,  and  in  a  part  of  little  Holden 
Chapel,  at  Cambridge.  From  that  modest 
beginning  the  school  has  gradually  grown  until 
it  counts  a  staff  of  forty-seven  teachers,  ten 
professors,  six  assistant  professors,  nine  in 
structors,  thirteen  clinical  instructors,  and 
nine  assistants — working  in  the  spacious  and 
well-equipped  building,  which  we  are  shortly 
to  inspect,  and  commanding  every  means  of 
instruction  and  research  which  laboratories, 
dispensaries  and  hospitals  can  supply.  Out 
of  our  present  strength  and  abundance  we 
look  back  to  the  founding  of  the  school 
and  to  its  slow  and  painful  development.  We 
bear  in  our  hearts  the  three  generations  of 
teachers  who  have  served  this  school  with 
disinterested  diligence  and  zeal.  We  recall 
their  unrequited  labors,  their  frequent  anxieties 
and  conflicts  and  their  unfulfilled  hopes ;  we 
bring  to  mind  the  careful  plantings  and  the 
tardy  harvests,  reaped  at  last,  but  not  by 
them  that  sowed.  We  meet,  indeed,  to  rejoice 


THE  HAEVAED  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  243 

in  present  prosperity  and  fair  prospects,  but 
we  would  first  salute  our  predecessors  and 
think  with  reverence  and  gratitude  of  their 
toils  and  sacrifices,  the  best  fruits  of  which  our 
generation  has  inherited. 

"The  medical  faculty  of  to-day  have  strong 
grounds  for  satisfaction  in  the  present  state  of 
the  school ;  for  they  have  made  great  changes 
in  its  general  plan  and  policy,  run  serious 
risks,  received  hearty  support  from  the  pro 
fession  and  the  community,  and  now  see  their 
efforts  crowned  with  substantial  success.  By 
doubling  the  required  period  of  study  in  each 
year  of  the  course,  instituting  an  admission 
examination,  strengthening  the  examinations  at 
the  end  of  each  year,  and  establishing  a 
voluntary  fourth  year  of  instruction,  which 
clearly  indicates  that  the  real  standard  of  the 
faculty  cannot  be  reached  in  three  years,  they 
have  taken  step  after  step  to  increase  their 
own  labors,  make  the  attainment  of  the  degree 
more  difficult,  and  diminish  the  resort  of 
students  to  the  school.  They  have  deliberately 
sacrificed  numbers  in  their  determination  to 
improve  the  quality  of  the  graduates  of  the 
school.  At  the  same  time  they  have  success- 


244  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

fully  carried  out  an  improvement  in  medical 
education  which  required  large  expenditures. 
This  improvement  is  the  partial  substitution, 
by  every  student,  of  personal  practice  in  lab 
oratories  for  work  upon  books,  and  attendance 
at  lectures.  The  North  Grove  street  building, 
erected  in  1846-47,  contained  only  one  small 
laboratory  for  students,  that  of  anatomy.  The 
new  building  contains  a  students'  laboratory 
for  each  of  the  five  fundamental  subjects  — 
anatomy,  physiology,  chemistry,  histology  and 
pathology  —  and  that  a  large  part  of  the 
building  is  devoted  to  these  working  rooms. 
It  was  a  grave  question  whether  the  profes 
sion,  the  community  and  the  young  men  who 
year  by  year  aspire  to  become  physicians  and 
surgeons  would  support  the  faculty  in  making 
these  improvements.  The  answer  can  now  be 
recorded. 

"The  school  has  received  by  gift  and  bequest 
three  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dollars  in 
ten  years ;  it  has  secured  itself  in  the  centre 
of  the  city  for  many  years  to  come  by  the 
timely  purchase  of  a  large  piece  of  land  ;  it 
has  paid  about  two  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
dollars  for  a  spacious,  durable  and  well-arranged 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  245 

building ;  it  has  increased  its  annual  expendi 
ture  for  salaries  of  teachers  from  twenty  thou 
sand  dollars  in  1871-72,10  thirty-six  thousand 
dollars  in  1882-83;  its  receipts  have  exceeded 
its  expenses  in  every  year  since  1871-72,  and 
its  invested  funds  now  exceed  those  of  1871 
by  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
At  the  same  time  the  school  has  become  a 
centre  of  chemical,  physiological,  histological 
and  sanitary  research,  as  well  as  a  place  for 
thorough  instruction ;  its  students  bring  to  the 
school  a  better  education  than  ever  before ;  they 
work  longer  and  harder  while  in  the  school, 
and  leave  it  prepared,  so  far  as  sound  training 
can  prepare  them  to  enter,  not  the  over-crowded 
lower  ranks  of  the  profession,  but  the  higher, 
where  there  is  always  room. 

"  The  faculty  recognize  that  the  generosity  of 
the  community  and  the  confidence  of  the 
students  impose  upon  them  reciprocal  obliga 
tions.  They  gladly  acknowledge  themselves 
bound  to  teach  with  candor  and  enthusiasm, 
to  observe  and  study  with  diligence  that  they 
may  teach  always  better  and  better,  to  illus 
trate  before  their  students  the  pure  scientific 
spirit,  and  to  hold  all  their  attainments  and 


246  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

discoveries  at  the  service  of  mankind.  Certainly 
the  medical  faculty  have  good  reason  to  ask 
to-day  for  the  felicitations  of  the  profession  and 
the  public. 

"  Nevertheless,  the  governors,  teachers,  gradu 
ates  and  friends  of  this  school  have  no  thought 
of  resting  contented  with  its  present  condition. 
Instructed  by  its  past,  they  have  faith  in  its 
future.  They  hope  they  know  that  the  best 
fruits  of  their  labors  will  be  reaped  by  later 
generations.  The  medical  profession  is  fortunate 
among  the  learned  professions  in  that  a  fresh 
and  boundless  field  of  unimaginable  fertility 
spreads  out  before  it.  Its  conquests  to  come 
are  infinitely  greater  than  those  already  achieved. 
The  great  powers  of  chemistry  and  physics, 
themselves  all  new,  have  only  just  now  been 
effectively  employed  in  the  service  of  medicine 
and  surgery.  The  zoologist,  entomologist,  vet 
erinarian  and  sanitarian  have  just  begun  to 
contribute  effectively  to  the  progress  of  medi 
cine. 

"The  great  achievements  of  this  century  in 
medical  science  and  the  healing  art  are  all 
prophetic.  Thus,  the  measurable  deliverance 
of  mankind  from  small-pox  is  an  earnest  of 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          247 

deliverance  from  measles,  scarlatina,  and  ty 
phoid  fever.  Within  forty  years  anaesthetics  and 
antiseptics  have  quadrupled  the  chances  of 
success  in  grave  surgical  operations  and  have 
extended  indefinitely  the  domain  of  warrantable 
surgery ;  but  in  value  far  beyond  all  the 
actual  benefits  which  have  thus  far  accrued 
to  mankind  from  these  discoveries  is  the  clear 
prophecy  they  utter  of  greater  blessing  to 
come.  A  medical  school  must  needs  be  al 
ways  expecting  new  wonders. 

"  How  is  medical  science  to  be  advanced  ? 
First,  by  the  devoted  labors  of  men,  young 
and  old,  who  give  their  lives  to  medical  obser 
vations,  research  and  teaching;  secondly,  by 
the  gradual  aggregation  in  safe  hands  of  per 
manent  endowments  for  the  promotion  of 
medical  science  and  of  the  sciences  upon  which 
medicine  rests.  Neither  of  these  springs  of 
progress  is  to  fail  us  here.  Modern  society 
produces  the  devoted  student  of  science  as 
naturally  and  inevitably  as  mediaeval  society 
produced  the  monk.  Enthusiastic  devotion  to 
unworklly  ends  has  not  diminished;  it  only 
manifests  itself  in  new  directions.  So,  too, 
benevolence  and  public  spirit,  when  diverted 


248  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

by  the  teachings  of  both  natural  and  political 
science  from  many  of  the  ancient  forms  of 
benevolent  activity,  have  simply  found  new  and 
better  modes  of  action. 

"With  thankfulness  for  the  past,  with  reason 
able  satisfaction  in  the  present,  and  with  joy 
ful  hope  in  the  future,  the  medical  faculty 
celebrate  this  anniversary  festival,  welcoming 
their  guests,  thanking  their  benefactors,  and 
exchanging  with  their  colleagues,  their  students, 
and  the  governing  -boards  mutual  congratu 
lations  and  good  wishes  as  the  school  sets 
bravely  out  upon  its  second  century." 

At  the  close  of  his  address  President  Eliot 
turned  to  the  large  audience,  and  said : 

"I  have  now  the  pleasure  of  presenting  to 
you  our  oldest  professor  and  our  youngest  ; 
our  man  of  science,  and  our  man  of  letters ; 
our  teacher  and  our  friend,  Doctor  Holmes." 

From  the  delightful  and  characteristic  address 
of  Doctor  Holmes,  we  are  permitted  to  give 
the  following  extracts : 

"We  are  in  the  habit  of  counting  a  gener 
ation  as  completed  in  thirty  years,  but  two 
lives  cover  a  whole  century  by  an  easy  act 
of  memory.  I,  who  am  now  addressing  you, 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          249 

distinctly     remember     the     Boston     practitioner 
who  walked  among  the  dead  after  the   battle  of 
Bunker    Hill,     and     pointed     out     the    body     of 
Joseph   Warren   among    the  heaps   of   the   slain. 
Look    forward    a    little    while    from    that    time 
to    the    period     at    which    this     medical     school 
was    founded.     Eight     years     had    passed    since 
John   Jeffries    was   treading   the    bloody   turf   on 
yonder     hillside.       The     independence      of     the 
United     States    had    just     been    recognized    by 
Great      Britain.        The     lessons     of      the     war 
were   fresh    in    the    minds    of    those    who    had 
served   as    military   surgeons.     They  knew   what 
anatomical   knowledge    means    to  the  man  called 
upon    to    deal    with    every    form    of    injury    to 
every    organ    of    the    body.     They    knew    what 
fever   and    dysentery    are     in     the    camp,     and 
what   skill    is    needed    by    those    who    have    to 
treat   the  diseases   more  fatal   than  the   conflicts 
of   the    battlefield.     They    know    also,    and    too 
well,    how     imperfectly     taught    were     most     of 
those    to    whom   the    health   of   the   whole   com 
munity  was  entrusted.     .  .  ..--  .,',  r.    ..... 

"And  now  I  will  ask  you  to  take  a  stride  of 
half  a  century,  from  the  year  1783  to  the  year 
1833.  Of  this  last  date  I  can  speak  from  my 


250  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

own  recollection.  In  April,  1833,  I  had  been 
more  than  two  years  a  medical  student  attend 
ing  the  winter  lectures  of "  this  school,  and 
have  therefore  a  vivid  recollection  of  the  pro 
fessors  of  that  day.  I  will  only  briefly  charac 
terize  them  by  their  various  merits,  not  so 
much  troubling  myself  about  what  may  have 
been  their  short-comings.  The  shadowy  pro 
cession  moves  almost  visibly  by  me  as  I 
speak :  John  Collins  Warren,  a  cool  and  skil 
ful  operator,  a  man  of  unshaken  nerves,  of 
determined  purpose,  of  stern  ambition,  equipped 
with  a  fine  library,  but  remarkable  quite  as 
much  for  knowledge  of  the  world  as  for 
erudition,  and  keeping  a  steady  eye  on  pro 
fessional  and  social  distinctions,  which  he 
attained  and  transmitted. 

"James  Jackson,  a  man  of  serene  and  clear 
intelligence,  well  instructed,  not  over  book-fed, 
truthful  to  the  centre,  a  candid  listener  to  all 
opinions ;  a  man  who  forgot  himself  in  his 
care  for  others  and  his  love  for  his  profession ; 
by  common  consent  recognized  as  a  model  of 
the  wise  and  good  physician.  Jacob  Bigelow, 
more  learned,  far  more  various  in  gifts  and 
acquirements  than  any  of  his  colleagues ;  shrewd, 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  251 

inventive,  constructive,  questioning,  patient  in 
forming  opinions,  steadfast  in  maintaining  them; 
a  man  of  infinite  good  nature,  of  ready  wit, 
of  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  and  a  fine  literary 
taste  ;  one  of  the  most  accomplished  of  Amer 
ican  physicians  ;  I  do  not  recall  the  name  of 
one  who  could  be  considered  his  equal  in  all 
respects.  Walter  Channing,  meant  by  nature 
for  a  man  of  letters,  like  his  brothers,  William 
Ellery  and  Edward ;  vivacious,  full  of  anec 
dote,  ready  to  make  trial  of  new  remedies,  with 
the  open  and  receptive  intelligence  belonging 
to  his  name  as  a  birthright  ;  esteemed  in  his 
specialty  by  those  who  called  on  him  in 
emergencies.  The  professor  of  chemistry  of  that 
day  was  pleasant  in  the  lecture  room  ;  rather 
nervous  and  excitable,  I  should  say,  and  judi 
ciously  self-conservative  when  an  explosion  was 
a  part  of  the  programme." 

Speaking  of  the  new  building,  Doctor  Holmes 
said  : 

"  You  will  enter  or  look  into  more  amphi 
theatres  and  lecture-rooms  than  you  might  have 
thought  were  called  for.  But  if  you  knew 
what  it  is  to  lecture  and  be  lectured  to,  in 
a  room  just  emptied  of  its  preceding  audience, 


252  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

you  would  be  thankful  that  any  arrangement 
should  prevent  such  an  evil.  The  experimental 
physiologists  tell  us  that  a  bird  will  live  under 
a  bell  glass  until  he  has  substituted  a  large 
amount  of  carbonic  acid  for  oxygen  in  the  air 
of  the  bell  glass.  But  if  another  bird  is  taken 
from  the  open  air  and  put  in  with  the  first, 
the  new-comer  speedily  dies.  So  when  the 
class  I  was  lecturing  to,  was  sitting  in  an 
atmosphere  once  breathed  already,  after  I  have 
v  seen  head  after  head  gently  declining,  /'and  one 
pair  of  eyes  after  another  emptying  themselves 
of  intelligence,/!  have  said,  inaudibly,  with  the  con 
siderate  self-restraint  of  Musidora's  rural  lover : 

"  '  Sleep  on,  dear  youth  ;  this  does  not  mean 
that  you  are  indolent,  or  that  I  am  dull ;  it 
is  the  partial  coma  of  commencing  asphyxia.' 

"You  will  see  extensive  apartments  destined 
for  the  practical  study  of  chemistry  and  of 
physiology.  But  these  branches  are  no  longer 
studied  as  of  old,  by  merely  listening  to  lec 
tures.  The  student  must  himself  perform  the 
analyses  which  he  used  to  hear  about.  He 
must  not  be  poisoned  at  his  work,  and  there 
fore  he  will  require  a  spacious  and  well-venti 
lated  room  to  work  in.  You  read  but  the 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  253 

other  day  of  an  esteemed  fellow-citizen  who 
died  •  from  inhaling  the  vapors  of  a .  broken 
demijohn  of  a  corrosive  acid.  You  will  be  glad 
to  see  that  every  precaution  is  taken  to  insure 
the  safety  and  health  of  our  students. 

"Physiology,  as  now  studied,  involves  the  use 
of  much  delicate  and  complex  machinery. 
You  may  remember  the  balance  at  which 
Sanctorius  sat  at  his  meals,  so  that  when  he 
had  taken  in  a  certain  number  of  ounces  the 
lightened  table  -and  more  heavily  v/eighted 
philosopher  gently  parted  company.  You  have 
heard,  perhaps,  of  Pettenkofer's  chamber,  by 
means  of  which  all  the  living  processes  of  a 
human  body  are  made  to  declare  the  total 
consumption  and  product  during  a  given  period. 
Food  and  fuel  supplied ;  work  done.  Never 
was  the  human  body  as  a  machine  so  under 
stood,  never  did  it  give  such  an  account  of 
itself,  as  it  now  does  in  the  legible  hand 
writing  of  the  cardiograph,  the  sphygmograph, 
the  myograph,  and  other  self-registering  contriv 
ances,  with  all  of  which  the  student  of  to-day 
is  expected  to  be  practically  familiar. 

Among 

the  various  apartments  destined  to  special 


254  OLIVEE  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

uses  one  will  be  sure  to  rivet  your  attention ; 
namely,  the  Anthorpotomic  Laboratory,  known 
to  plainer  speech  as  the  dissecting  room.  The 
most  difficult  work  of  a  medical  school  is  the 
proper  teaching  of  practical  anatomy.  The 
pursuit  of  that  vitally  essential  branch  of  pro 
fessional  knowledge  has  always  been  in  the 
face  of  numerous  obstacles.  Superstition  has 
arrayed  all  her  hobgoblins  against  it.  Popular 
prejudice  has  made  the  study  embarrassing  and 
even  dangerous  to  those  engaged  in  it.  The 
surgical  student  was  prohibited  from  obtaining 
the  knowledge  required  in  his  profession,  and 
the  surgeon  was  visited  with  crushing  pen 
alties  for  want  of  that  necessary  knowledge. 
Nothing  is  easier  than  to  excite  the  odium 
of  the  ignorant  against  this  branch  of  in 
struction  and  those  who  are  engaged  in  it. 
It  is  the  duty  and  interest  of  all  intelligent 
members  of  the  community  to  defend  the 
anatomist  and.  his  place  of  labor  against  such 
appeals  to  ignorant  passion  as  will  interfere 
with  this  part  of  medical  education,  above  all, 
against  such  inflammatory  representations  as 
may  be  expected  to  lead  to  mid-day  mobs  or 
midnight  incendiarism. 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          255 

"The  enlightened  legislation  of  Massachusetts 
has  long  sanctioned  the  practice  of  dissection, 
and  provided  means  for  supporting  the  needs 
of  anatomical  instruction,  which  managed  with 
decent  privacy  and  discretion,  have  served  the 
beneficent  purpose  intended  by  the  wise  and 
humane  law-givers,  without  doing  wrong  to 
those  natural  sensibilities  which  are  always  to 
be  respected. 

"  During  the  long  period  in  which  I  have 
been  a  professor  of  anatomy  in  this  medical 
school,  I  have  had  abundant  opportunities  of 
knowing  the  zeal,  the  industry,  the  intelli 
gence,  the  good  order  and  propriety  with  which 
this  practical  department-  has  been  carried  on. 
The  labors  superintended  by  the  demonstrator 
and  his  assistants  are  in  their  nature  repulsive, 
and  not  free  from  risk  of  diseases,  though  in 
both  these  respects  modern  chemistry  has 
introduced  great  ameliorations.  The  student 
is  breathing  an  air  which  unused  senses  would 
find  insufferable.  He  has  tasks  to  perform 
which  the  chambermaid  and  the  stable-boy 
Wwuld  shrink  from  undertaking.  We  cannot 
wonder  that  the  sensitive  Rousseau  could  not 
endure  the  atmosphere  of  the  room  in  which 


25B  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

he  had  began  a  course  of  anatomical  study. 
But  we  know  that  the  great  painters,  Michael 
Angelo,  Leonardo  and  Raphael  must  have  wit 
nessed  many  careful  dissections  ;  and  what  they 
endured  for  art  our  students  can  endure  for 
science  and  humanity. 

"Among  the  large  number  of  students  who 
have  worked  in  the  department  of  which  I  am 
speaking  during  my  long  term  of  service  — 
nearly  two  thousand  are  on  the  catalogue  as 
students — there  must  have  been  some  who 
were  thoughtless,  careless,  unmindful  of  the 
proprieties.  Something  must  be  pardoned  to 
the  hardening  effect  of  habit.  Something  must 
be  forgiven  to  the  light-heartedness  of  youth, 
which  shows  itself  in  scenes  that  would  sadden 
and  solemnize  the  unseasoned  visitor.  Even 
youthful  womanhood  has  been  known  to  forget 
itself  in  the  midst  of  solemn  surroundings.  I 
well  remember  the  complaint  of  Willis,  a  lover 
of  the  gentle  sex,  and  not  likely  to  have  told 
a  lie  against  a  charming  young  person  ;  I  quote 
from  my  rusty  memory,  but  I  believe  correctly  : 


She  trifled  1    ay,   that   angel   maid, 
She  trifled  where   the   dead   was   laid. 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          257 

"Nor  are  older  persons  always  so  thoughtful 
and  serious  in  the  presence  of  mortality  as  it 
might  be  supposed  they  would  show  them 
selves.  Some  of  us  have  encountered  Congres 
sional  committees  attending  the  remains  of 
distinguised  functionaries  to  their  distant  place 
of  burial.  They  generally  bore  up  well  under 
their  bereavement.  One  might  have  expected 
to  find  them  gathered  in  silent  groups  in  the 
parlors  of  the  Continental  Hotel  or  the  Brevoort 
House  ;  to  meet  the  grief-stricken  members  of 
the  party  smileless  and  sobbing  as  they  sadly 
paced  the  corridors  of  Parker's,  before  they  set 
off  in  a  mournful  and  weeping  procession.  It 
was  not  so ;  Candor  would  have  to  confess 
that  it  was  far  otherwise ;  Charity  would  sug 
gest  that  Curiosity  should  withdraw  her  eye 
from  the  key-hole ;  Humanity  would  try  to 
excuse  what  she  could  not  help  witnessing ; 
and  a  tear  would  fall  from  the  blind  eye  of 
oblivion  and  blot  out  their  hotel  bills  forever. 

"You  need  not  be  surprised,  then,  if  among 
this  large  number  of  young  men  there  should 
have  been  now  and  then  something  to  find 
fault  with.  Twice  in  the  course  of  thirty-five 
years  I  have  had  occasion  to  rebuke  the  acts 


258  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

of  individual  students,  once  in  the  presence  of 
the  whole  class  on  the  human  and  manly  sym 
pathy  of  which  I  could  always  safely  rely.  I 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  considering  myself 
at  liberty  to  visit  the  department  I  am  speaking 
of,  though  it  had  its  own  officers ;  I  took  a 
part  in  drawing  up  the  original  regulations 
which  governed  the  methods  of  work ;  I  have 
often  found  fault  with  individuals  or  small 
classes  for  a  want  of  method  and  neatness 
which  is  too  common  in  all  such  places.  But 
in  the  face  of  all  peccadilloes  and  of  the  idle 
and  baseless  stories  which  have  been  circulated, 
I  will  say,  as  if  from  the  chair  I  no  longer 
occupy,  that  the  management  of  the  difficult, 
delicate  and  all  important  branch  committed  to 
the  care  of  a  succession  of  laborious  and  consci 
entious  demonstrators,  as  I  have  known  it 
through  more  than  the  third  of  a  century,  has 
been  discreet,  humane,  faithful,  and  that  the 
record  of  that  department  is  most  honorable  to 
them  and  to  the  classes  they  have  instructed. 
"But  there  are  better  things  to  think  of  and 
to  speak  of  than  the  false  and  foolish  stories 
to  which  we  have  been  forced  to  listen. 
While  the  pitiable  attempt  has  been  making  to 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          259 

excite  the  feelings  of  the  ignorant  against  the 
school  of  the  university,  hundreds  of  sufferers 
throughout  Christendom  —  throughout  civiliza 
tion —  have  been  blessing  the  name  of  Boston 
and  the  Harvard  Medical  School  as  the  source 
from  which  relief  has  reached  them  for  one 
of  the  gravest  injuries,  and  for  one  of  the 
most  distressing  of  human  maladies.  I  wit 
nessed  many  of  the  experiments  by  which  the 
great  surgeon  who  lately  filled  a  chair  in  Har 
vard  University,  has  made  the  world  his  debtor. 
Those  poor  remains  of  mortality  of  which  we 
have  heard  so  much,  have  been  of  more  ser 
vice  to  the  human  race  than  the  souls  once 
within  them  ever  dreamed  of  conferring.  Doc 
tor  Bigelow' s  repeated  and  searching  investiga 
tions  into  the  anatomy  of  the  hip  joint  showed 
him  the  band  which  formed  the  chief  difficulty 
in  reducing  dislocations  of  the  thigh.  What 
Sir  Astley  Cooper  and  all  the  surgeons  after 
him  had  failed  to  see,  Doctor  Bigelow  detected. 
New  rules  for  reduction  of  the  dislocation  were 
the  consequence,  and  the  terrible  pulleys  disap 
peared  from  the  operating  amphitheatre. 

"  Still  more  remarkable  are  the  results  obtained 
by  Doctor  Bigelow  in  the  saving  of  life  and  the 


260  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

lessening  of  suffering  in  the  new  method  of  op 
eration  for  calculus.  By  the  testimony  of  those 
renowned  surgeons,  Sir  Henry  Thompson  and 
Mr.  Erichsen,  by  the  award  to  Doctor  Bigelow 
of  a  sexennial  prize  founded  by  the  Marquis  d' 
Argenteuil,  and  by  general  consent,  this  in 
novation  is  established  as  one  of  the  great 
modern  improvements  in  surgery.  I  saw  the 
numerous  and  patient  experiments  by  which 
that  priceless  improvement  was  effected,  and  I 
cannot  stop  to  moan  over  a  scrap  of  integument, 
said  to  have  been  made  imperishable,  when  I 
remember  that  for  every  lifeless  body  which 
served  for  these  experiments,  a  hundred  died 
or  a  thousand  living  fellow  creatures  have  been 
saved  from  unutterable  anguish,  and  many  of 
them  from  premature  death. 

"  You  will  visit  the  noble  hall  soon  to  be  filled 
with  the  collections  left  by  the  late  Professor 
John  Collins  Warren,  added  to  by  other  contri 
butors,  and  to  the  care  and  increase  of  which 
the  late  Doctor  John  Jackson  of  precious  memory 
gave  many  years  of  his  always  useful  and 
laborious  life.  You  may  expect  to  find  there 
a  perfect  Golgotha  of  skulls  and  a  platoon  of 
skeletons  open  to  the  sight  of  all  comers.  You 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  261 

will  find  portions  of  every  human  organ.  You 
will  see  bones  softened  by  acid  and  tied  in 
bowknots ;  other  bones  burned  until  they  are 
light  as  cork  and  whiter  than  ivory,  yet  still 
keeping  their  form  ;  you  will  see  sets  of  teeth 
from  the  stage  of  infancy  to  that  of  old  age, 
and  in  every  intermediate  condition,  exquisitely 
prepared  and  mounted  ;  you  will  see  preparations 
that  once  formed  portions  of  living  beings  now 
carefully  preserved  to  show  their  vessels  and 
nerves ;  the  organ  of  hearing  exquisitely  carved 
by  French  artists ;  you  will  find  specimens  of 
human  integument,  showing  its  constituent  parts 
in  different  races  ;  among  the  rest,  that  of  the 
Ethiopian,  with  its  cuticle  or  false  skin  turned 
back  to  show  that  God  gave  him  a  true  skin 
beneath  it  as  white  as  our  own.  Some  of  these 
specimens  are  injected  to  show  their  blood 
vessels ;  some  are  preserved  in  alcohol  ;  some 
are  dried.  There  was  formerly  a  small  scrap, 
said  to  be  human  skin,  which  had  been  subjected 
to  the  tanning  process,  and  which  was  not  the 
least  interesting  of  the  series.  I  have  not  seen 
it  for  a  good  while,  and  it  may  have  disappeared 
as  the  cases  might  happen  to  be  open  while 
unscrupulous  strangers  were  strolling  through 


262  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

the  museum.  If  it  has,  the  curator  will  probably 
ask  the  next  poor  fellow  who  has  his  leg  cut 
off,  for  permission  to  have  a  portion  of  its  integ 
ument  turned  into  leather.  He  would  not 
object,  in  all  probability,  especially  if  he  were 
promised  that  a  wallet  for  his  pocket  or  a  slip 
per  for  his  remaining  foot,  should  be  made 
from  it. 

"There  is  no  use  in  quarrelling  with  the 
specimens  in  a  museum  because  so  many  of 
them  once  formed  a  part  of  human  beings.  The 
British  Government  paid  fifteen  thousand  pounds 
for  the  collection  made  by  John  Hunter,  which 
is  full  of  such  relics.  The  Huntarian  Museum 
is  still  a  source  of  pride  to  every  educated  citi 
zen  in  London.  Our  foreign  visitors  have 
already  learned  that  the  Warren  Anatomical 
Museum  is  one  of  the  sights  worth  seeing  during 
their  stay  among  us.  Charles  Dickens  was 
greatly  interested  in  looking  through  its  treasures, 
and  that  intelligent  and  indefatigable  hard 
worker,  the  Emperor  of  Brazil,  inspected  its 
wonders  with  as  much  curiosity  as  if  he  had 
been  a  professor  of  anatomy.  May  it  ever  re 
main  sacred  from  harm  in  the  noble  hall  of 
which  it  is  about  taking  possession.  If  vio- 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          263 

lence,  excited  by  false  outcries,  shall  ever 
assail  the  treasure-house  of  anthropology,  we 
may  tremble  lest  its  next  victim  shall  be  the 
home  of  art,  and  ignorant  passions  once  aroused, 
the  archives  that  hold  the  wealth  of  literature 
perish  in  a  new  Alexandrian  conflagration. 
This  is  not  a  novel  source  of  apprehension  to 
the  thoughtful.  Education,  religious,  moral,  in 
tellectual,  is  the  only  safeguard  against  so  fearful 
a  future. 

"  To  one  of  the  great  interests  of  society,  the 
education  of  those  who  are  to  be  the  guardians 
of  its  health,  the  stately  edifice  which  opens 
its  doors  to  us  for  the  first  time  to-day  is 
devoted.  It  is  a  lasting  record  of  the  spirit 
and  confidence  of  the  young  men  of  the  med 
ical  profession,  who  led  their  elders  in  the 
brave  enterprise,  an  enduring  proof  of  the 
liberality  of  the  citizens  of  Boston  and  of  friends 
beyond  our  narrow  boundaries,  a  monument  to 
the  memory  of  those  who,  a  hundred  years 
ago,  added  a  school  of  medicine  to  our  hon 
ored,  cherished,  revered  university,  and  to  all 
who  have  helped  to  sustain  its  usefulness  and 
dignity  through  the  century  just  completed. 

"  It   stands   solid   and   four  square   among  the 


264  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

structures  which  are  the  pride  of  our  New 
England  Venice  —  our  beautiful  metropolis,  won 
by  well-directed  toil  from  the  marshes  and 
creeks  and  lagoons  which  were  our  inheritance 
from  nature.  The  magnificent  churches  around 
it  let  in  the  sunshine  through  windows  stained 
with  the  pictured  legends  of  antiquity.  The 
student  of  nature  is  content  with  the  white 
rays  that  show  her  just  as  she  is  ;  and  if  ever 
a  building  was  full  of  light  —  light  from  the 
north  and -the  south;  light  from  the  east  and 
the  west ;  light  from  above,  which  the  great 
concave  mirror  of  sky  pours  down  into  it  — 
this  is  such  an  edifice.  The  halls  where  Art 
teaches  its  "lessons  and  those  where  the  sister 
Sciences  store  their  collections,  the  galleries 
that  display  the  treasures  of  painting,  and  sculp 
ture,  are  close  enough  for  agreeable  companion 
ship.  It  is  probable  that  in  due  time  the 
Public  Library,  with  its  vast  accumulations,  will 
be  next  door  neighbor  to  the  new  domicile  of 
our  old  and  venerated  institution.  And  over 
all  this  region  rise  the  tall  landmarks  which 
tell  the  dwellers  in  our  streets  and  the  trav 
eller  as  he  approaches  that  in  the  home  of 
Science,  Arts,  and  Letters,  the  God  of  our 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  265 

Fathers  is  never  forgotten,  but  that  high  above 
these  shrines  of  earthly  knowledge  and  beauty, 
are  lifted  the  towers  and  spires  which  are  the 
symbols  of  human  aspiration  ever  looking  up 
to  Him,  the  Eternal,  Immortal,  Invisible." 

At  the  conclusion  of  this  noble  address,  the 
portrait  of  Professor  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
was  presented  to  the  Medical  School  by  Doctor 
Minot,  in  the  happily-chosen  words  that  follow : 

"Many  alumni  of  the  school,  together  with 
some  of  its  present  students,  have  desired  that 
a  permanent  memorial  of  their  beloved  teacher, 
Professor  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  should  be 
placed  in  the  new  college  building,  in  token  of 
their  gratitude  for  the  great  service's  which  he 
has  rendered  to  many  generations  of  his  pupils. 
By  his  eminent  scientific  attainments,  his  sound 
method  of  teaching,  his  felicity  of  illustration, 
and  his  untiring  devotion  to  all  the  duties  of 
his  chair,  he  inspired  those  who  were  so  for 
tunate  as  to  come  under  his  instruction  with 
the  importance  of  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
anatomy,  the  foundation  of  medical  science. 
In  the  name  of  the  alumni  and  students  of 
this  college,  I  have  the  pleasure  of  presenting 
to  the  medical  faculty  a  portrait  of  Professor 


266  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Holmes,  painted  by  Mr.  Alexander,  to  be  placed 
in  the  college  in  remembrance  of  his  invaluable 
services  to  Harvard  University,  to  the  medical 
profession  and  to  the  community." 

The  bust  of  Professor  Bigelow  was  then 
presented  to  the  school  by  Hon.  Samuel  Green, 
in  the  following  words : 

"The  pleasant  duty  has  been  assigned  me, 
Mr.  President,  to  present  to  you,  as  the  head 
of  the  corporation  of  Harvard  College,  in  behalf 
of  his  many  friends,  this  animated  bust  of 
Professor  Henry  J.  Bigelow.  The  list  of  sub 
scribers  comprises  about  fifty  names,  and 
includes  nearly  all  the  surgeons  of  the  two 
great  hospitals  in  this  city  ;  several  gentlemen 
not  belonging  to  the  medical  profession,  but 
warm  personal  friends  of  Doctor  Bigelow ;  a 
few  ladies  who  had  been  his  patients  ;  and 
all  the  surgical  house  pupils  who  had  ever  been 
connected  with  the  Massachusetts  General 
Hospital  during  his  long  term  of  service  at  that 
institution,  so  far  as  they  could  easily  be  reached 
by  personal  application.  The  bust  is  given  on 
the  condition  that  it  shall  be  placed  permanently 
in  the  new  surgical  lecture  room,  which  corre 
sponds  to  the  scene  of  Doctor  Bigelow's  long 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.          267 

labors  in  the  old  building.  It  has  been  made 
by  the  eminent  sculptor,  Launt  Thompson  of 
New  York,  and  is  a  -most  faithful  representa 
tion  of  the  distinguished  surgeon.  It  outlines 
with  such  accuracy  and  precision  the  features 
of  his  face  and  the  pose  of  his  head  that  nothing 
is  wanted,  in  the  opinion  of  his  friends,  to 
make  it  a  correct  likeness. 

"  I  need  not,  in  the  presence  of  this  audi 
ence,  name  the  various  .steps  by  which  Doctor 
Bigelow  has  reached  the  high  position  which  is 
conceded  to  him  as  freely  and  fully  in  Europe 
as  it  is  in  America ;  but  I  cannot  forbear  an 
allusion  to  some  of  his  original  researches.  His 
mechanism  of  the  reduction  of  a  dislocated 
femur  by  manipulation  was  a  great  discovery 
in  surgical  science,  and  follows  as  a  simple 
corollary  to  the  anatomical  facts  which  he  has 
so  clearly  and  minutely  demonstrated.  His 
operation  of  rapid  lithotrity  has  deprived  a 
painful  disease  of  much  of  its  terror  as  well  as 
of  its  danger.  Nor  should  I  overlook  on  this 
occasion  his  quick  and  ready  discernment  of 
the  importance  of  Doctor  Morton's  demon 
stration  of  the  use  of  ether  as  a  safe  anaesthetic, 
which  took  place  at  the  Massachusetts  General 


268  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Hospital  in  the  autumn  of  1846.  The  discovery 
of  this  greatest  boon  to  the  human  family, 
since  the  invention  of  printing,  was  fraught 
with  such  immense  possibilities  that  the 
world  was  slow  to  realize  its  magnitude ;  but 
by  the  clear  foresight  and  prudent  zeal  of 
Doctor  Bigelow,  shown  in  many  ways,  the  day 
was  hastened  when  its  use  became  well  nigh 
universal. 

j       "  Doctor  Bigelow  has  filled  the  chair  of  surgery 

/ ;  in  this  medical  school   during   thirty-three  years, 

/     a   period   of   professional    instruction    that    rarely 

^ 

I  ,  falls  to  the  lot  of  any  teacher ;  and  he  now 
leaves  it  with  the  honored  title  of  professor 
emeritus.  During  this  long  term  of  service 
he  has  taught,  through  his  lectures,  probably 
not  fewer  than  one  thousand  eight  hundred  stu 
dents,  who  have  graduated  at  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  and  perhaps  seven  thousand  five 
hundred  more  who  have  taken  their  degrees  else 
where  ;  and  by  these  thousands  of  physicians 
now  scattered  throughout  the  land,  those  of 
them  who  survive,  Doctor  Bigelow  is  remem 
bered  as  most  eminently  a  practical  teacher. 
Active  in  his  profession,  clear  in  his  instruction, 
and  enthusiastic  in  his  investigations,  he  always 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  269 

had  the  happy  faculty  of  imparting  to  his 
students  a  kindred  spirit  and  zeal.  Haud 
inexpert  us  loquor." 

The  remainder  of  the  exercises  took  place 
in  the  new  building.  The  dedicatory  prayer 
was  offered  by  Rev.  Doctor  Peabody,  who  con 
secrated  the  building  "  to  science,  humanity  and 
charity,  to  Christian  tenderness  and  love,  and 
to  all  the  ministries  that  can  enrich  humanity." 

President   Eliot   then    said  : 

"  In  behalf  of  the  President  and  Fellows  of 
Harvard  University,  and  of  the  Medical  School, 
I  declare  this  building  to  be  devoted  to  med 
ical  science  and  the  art  of  healing." 

Professor  Henry  W.  Williams,  in  behalf  of 
the  medical  faculty,  said  : 

"  Friends  of  the  Harvard  Medical  School  : 
For  a  hundred  years  the  medical  faculty  of 
Harvard  College  have  earnestly  sought  to  dis 
cover,  and  striven  faithfully  to  teach,  whatever 
might  exalt  the  condition,  relieve  the  woes  and 
prolong  the  service  of  those  minds  and  bodies 
through  which  man  lives,  and  moves,  and  is. 
Year  by  year  they  have  seen  their  horizon  of 
knowledge  extended  and  their  sphere  of  duty 
enlarged.  But,  though  zeal  and  self-sacrifice 


270  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

have  not  been  wanting,  their  efforts  to  be  use 
ful  have  been  continually  hindered  because  of 
imperfect  facilities  and  scanty  resources.  All 
is  changed.  In  this  more  wonderful  than  Alad 
din's  palace,  risen  from  the  sea,*  and  which 
has  already  endured  the  wrath  and  mercy  of 
the  flames,  we  see  a  fulfilment  of  our  hopes, 
and  the  means  and  assurance  of  success. 
Thanks  to  generous  benefactors,  there  will  no 
longer  be  a  lack  of  room  or  of  appliances  for 
our  needs ;  our  work  will  go  on  under  fairer 
auspices,  and  we  can  offer  to  disciples  of  the 
healing  art  fitter  opportunities  and  ampler  aid 
in  their  studies. 

"  As  spokesman  of  the  faculty  on  this  occasion, 
so  full  of  felicitation  and  of  promise,  I  would 
I  could  give  to  their  message  a  host  of  tongues, 
to  adequately  thank  those  whose  great  flood  of 
bounty  has  thus  favored  and  endowed  us.  In 
occupying  this  beautiful  and  convenient  struc 
ture,  we  shall  ever  feel  that  the  place  is  dig 
nified  by  the  givers'  deed.  And  we  rejoice 
the  more,  because  we  know  that  this  gift  of 
three  hundred  thousand  dollars  has  been  bestowed 
by  those  who  are  accustomed  to  use  their  own 

*  The  site  occupied  by  the  medical  college  was  once  covered  by  the  tides. 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  271 

eyes  in  their  estimation  of  desert,  and  that  it 
signifies  a  hearty  approval  of  our  endeavors, 
and  an  intent  that  medical  science,  as  it  is  to 
be  here  embodied  and  taught,  shall  have  a 
warm  and  generous  support. 

"In  accepting  this  more  than  princely  gift  as 
a  token  that  the  value  and  necessity  of  well- 
educated  physicians  to  every  community  is  felt 
and  acknowledged,  we  hail  the  privilege  of 
goodly  fellowship  in  which  the  donors  and  our 
selves  have  become  co-workers,  to  the  end  that 
blessings  to  the  whole  land  may  arise  and  be 
memorized  in  this  institution ;  and  we  trust 
that  the  efforts  of  the  faculty  to  advance  the 
knowledge,  train  the  judgment  and  perfect  the 
skill  of  those  entering  our  profession  will  ever 
continue  to  deserve  countenance  and  help. 

Colonel  Henry  Lee's  address  was  the  next  to 
follow  : 

Mr.  President :  Thanks  for  your  invitation 
to  be  present  on  this  interesting  occasion  — 
the  hundredth  anniversary  of  your  medical 
school  and  the  dedication  of  a  new  building 
of  fair  proportions,  well  adapted  to  your  wants, 
as  far  j  a  non-professional  can  judge.  You 
have  assigned  to  me  the  honorable  task  of 


272  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMFfS. 

speaking  for  the  contributors  to  the  building 
fund.  I  little  thought,  as  I  used  to  gaze  with 
awe  at  that  prim,  solitary,  impenetrable  little 
building  in  Mason  Street,  and  with  imaginative 
companions  conjure  up  the  mysteries  within, 
that  I  should  ever  dare  to  enter  and  explore 
its  interior;  nor  have  I  yet  acquired  that  relish 
for  morbid  specimens  which  characterized  my 
lamented  kinsman,  who  devoted  so  many  years 
to  accumulating  and  illustrating  your  patholog 
ical  collection.  It  is  an  ordeal  to  a  layman, 
Mr.  President,  especially  to  one  who  has  reached 
the  sixth  age,  to  be  so  forcibly  reminded,  as 
one  is  here,  of  the 

last  scene  of  all 

That  ends   this   strange,   eventful  history, 
Sans  teeth,  sans  eyes,   sans  taste,  sans  everything^ 

and  it  is  a  further  ordeal  to  assume  to  speak 
for  others,  whose  motives  for  aiding  you  I 
may  not  adequately  set  forth.  This  I  can 
say,  that  we  are  citizens  of  no  mean  city ; 
that  private  frugality  and  public  liberality  have 
distinguished  the  inhabitants  of  this  '  Old 
Town  of  Boston/  from  the  days  of  the  good 
and  wise  John  Winthrop,  whose  own  sub- 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  273 

stance  was  consumed  in  founding  this  colony, 
to  the  present  time.  Down  through  these  two 
centuries  and  a  half  the  multiform  and  ever- 
increasing  needs  of  the  community  have  been 
discovered  and  supplied,  not  by  Government, 
but  by  patriotic  citizens,  who  have  given  of 
their  time  and  substance  to  promote  the  com 
mon  weal,  remembering  '  that  the  body  is  not 
one  member,  but  many,  and  that  the  members 
should  have  the  same  care,  one  for  another.' 
It  is  this  public  spirit,  manifested  in  its  heroic 
form  in  our  civil  war,  that  has  made  this 
dear  old  Commonwealth  what  we  all  know  it 
to  be,  despite  foul  slanders.  Far  distant  be 
the  day  when  this  sense  of  brotherhood  shall 
be  lost.  Purple  and  fine  linen  are  well,  if  one 
can  afford  them  ;  but  let  not  Dives  forget 
Lazarus  at  his  gate. 

Ill  fares   the   land,   to   hastening   ills   a  prey, 
Where   wealth  accumulates,   and   men   decay. 

"Whatever  doubts  may  arise  as  to  some  of 
our  benevolent  schemes,  our  safety  and  prog 
ress  rest  upon  the  advancement  of  sound 
learning,  and  we  feel  assured  that  the  increased 
facilities  furnished  by  this  ample  building  for 


274  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

acquiring  and  disseminating  knowledge  of  our 
fearful  and  wonderful  frame,  will  be  improved 
by  your  brethren.  Some  of  the  papers  read 
before  the  International  Medical  College,  in 
London,  two  years  ago,  impressed  me  deeply 
with  the  many  wants  of  the  profession.  And 
who  are  more  likely  to  have  their  wants  sup 
plied  ?  for  the  physician  is  not  regarded  here, 
as  in  some  countries,  as  the  successor  to  the 
barber  surgeon,  and  his  fees  slipped  into  his 
upturned  palm  as  if  he  were  a  mendicant  or  a 
menial.  Dining  with  two  Englishmen,  one  an 
Oxford  professor,  the  other  the  brother  of  a 
lord,  a  '  few  years  since,  I  was  surprised  to 
hear  their  views  of  the  social  standing  of  the 
medical  profession,  and  could  not  help  con 
trasting  their  position  here,  where,  if  not  all 
autocrats,  they  are  all  constitutional,  and  some 
of  them  hereditary,  monarchs,  accompanied  by 
honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends.  But 
however  ranked,  physicians  have  the  same  at 
tributes  the  world  over.  I  have  had  occasion 
to  see  a  good  deal  of  English,  French,  Ger 
man  and  Italian  physicians  under  very  trying 
circumstances,  and  have  been  touched  by  their 
affectionate  devotion  to  their  patients.  The 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  275 

I 

physician  is  our  earliest  and  our  latest 
friend  ;  he  listens  to  our  first  and  our  last 
breath ;  in  all  times  of  bodily  distress  and 
danger  we  look  up  to  him  to  relieve  us. 
'  Neither  the  pestilence  that  walketh  in  dark 
ness,  nor  the  sickness  that  destroyeth  4n  the 
noonday,  deters  him.' 

Alike  to   him  is   time,  or   tide, 
December's   snow  or  July's   pride ; 
Alike  to  him  is  tide,  or  time, 
Moonless   midnight,   or   matin  prime. 

"  The  faithful  pursuit  of  any  profession  in 
volves  sacrifice  of  self ;  but  the  man  who  calls 
no  hour  his  own,  who  consecrates  his  days 
and  nights  to  suffering  humanity,  treads  close 
in  the  footsteps  of  his  Master.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  the  bond  between  them  and  their 
patients  is  so  strong ;  no  wonder  that  we 
respond  cheerfully  to  their  call,  in  gratitude 
for  what  they  have,  and  in  sorrow  for  what 
they  have  not,  been  able  to  do  to  preserve 
the  lives  and  to  promote  the  health  of  those 
dear  to  us.  And  how  could  money  be  spent 
more  economically  than  to  promote  the  further 
enlightenment  of  the  medical  profession  ?  What 


276         .        OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

better  legacy  can  we  leave  our  children,  and 
our  children's  children,  than  an  illumined 
medical  faculty  ?  " 

After  these  addresses  a  reception  was  given 
to  the  subscribers  to  the  building  fund  by 
President  Eliot  and  the  faculty  of  the  Medi 
cal  School. 

In  referring  to  Doctor  Holmes'  brave,  out 
spoken  words,  an  eminent  Boston  clergyman 
wrote  as  follows : 

"  The  only  qualification  which  we  have  heard 
of  the  universal  and  enthusiastic  appreciation 
of  the  sage,  the  vivacious  and  the  rich  utter 
ance  of  our  admired  doctor  and  foremost  man 
of  letters  on  this  occasion,  was  in  a  somewhat 
regretful  feeling  that  he  should  have  turned 
the  full  power  of  his  humor  and  of  his  caustic 
satire  upon  the  mean  and  contemptible  effort 
of  an  unprincipled  demagogue  to  defame  the 
Harvard  Medical  School.  We  do  not  sympa 
thize  with  even  this  qualified  stricture  on  the 
remarks  of  Doctor  Holmes  here  referred  to. 
True,  his  address  was  an  historical  one,  designed 
for  an  historical  review  of  the  past  of  the 
institution.  But  it  is  also  to  serve  the  uses  of 
history  for  the  future,  especially  as  a  record 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  277 

of  the  aspects  of  the  institution  and  of  the 
interest  and  confidence  of  our  living  commu 
nity  in  it  during  the  year  marking  such  a 
conspicuous  event  for  it  as  the  inauguration  of 
the  new  edifice  prepared  for  it  by  the  munifi 
cence  of  those  who  appreciate  its  almost  divine 
offices  of  mercy  and  benevolence.  And  during 
this  very  year,  an  assault  of  the  most  dastardly 
character  has  been  made  upon  it  by  one  who, 
high  in  office  and  with  vast  power  of  influence 
over  an  ignorant  and  easily  prejudiced  constit 
uency,  knows  as  well  as  any  one  among  us 
the  utter  and  wicked  falsity  of  his  allegations. 
"  Doctor  Holmes  was  forced  to  make  some 
recognition  of  these  slanders  addressed  to  the 
uninformed,  credulous  and  gullible  portion  of 
our  community.  He  would  have  been  generally 
censured  if  he  had  passed  them  by.  The  only 
question  for  him  and  for  a  critically  judging 
community  would  concern  the  true  spirit  and 
way  in  which  he  should  recognize  them.  We 
can  conceive  of  no  more  fitting  and  effective 
course  than  that  which  the  sagacious  doctor 
followed.  The  occasion  was  one  in  which  it 
was  for  him,  in  defining  and  greeting  the  steady 
advance  made  during  a  century  in  medical  and 


278  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

surgical  science  among  us,  to  remind  his  hearers 
that  those  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  this 
advancement,  have  had,  with  their  own  noble, 
personal  devotion  and  effort,  to  triumph  over 
and  fight  their  way  against  all  the  prejudices 
and  obstructions  which  popular  ignorance,  preju 
dice  and  superstition  have  engaged  to  annoy 
and  withstand  them.  In  scarcely  any  one 
of  the  multiplied  interests  of  average  society 
have  popular  weaknesses  and  follies  more  mis 
chievously  asserted  themselves  than  in  opposi 
tion  to  hospitals  and  medical  schools.  When 
that  noble  institution,  the  Massachusetts  Gen 
eral  Hospital,  was  devised,  about  three  quar 
ters  of  a  century  ago,  the  most  besotted  folly 
and  suspicion  were  engaged  against  those  who 
planned  and  fostered  it.  It  was  charged  that 
under  the  guise  of  benevolent  service  for  home 
less  sufferers  and  for  the  victims  of  accident 
or  special  maladies,  it  was  really  to  be  artfully 
used  for  the  trial  of  new  medicines  and  risky 
experiments  on  the  poor  and  humble,  that 
practitioners  might  have  the  benefit  of  the 
knowledge  thus  gained  in  dealing  with  their 
rich  patients.  Let  any  one  visit  the  wards  of 
that  institution  to-day,  or  read  its  annual  reports, 


THE  HARVARD  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  279 

noting  the  thousands  of  cases  of  its  work  of 
mercy  in  restoration  or  relief  of  all  classes 
of  sufferers,  and  then  recall  the  asinine  abuse 
visited  upon  its  projectors.  The  millions  of 
money  which  have  been  poured  into  its  treas 
ury,  mostly  from  the  private  benevolence  of 
our  own  citizens,  is  the  crown  of  glory  for 
that  institution.  An  appeal  of  the  most  artful 
and  atrocious  sort  to  this  same  popular  ignor 
ance  and  passion  has  been  made  this  year  for 
purposes  which  we  need  not  search  the  dic 
tionary  to  characterize  with  fitting  epithets. 
How  could  Doctor  Holmes  on  this  great  occa 
sion  pass  it  by  ?  How  could  he  have  treated 
the  offence  and  the  offender  with  a  more  fit 
ting  combination  of  wit  and  scorn  ?  Most 
happy  also  was  his  suggestive  allusion  to  the 
self  mastery  by  which  practitioners  at  the 
dissecting  table  have  to  control,  in  the  interest 
of  their  high  service,  revulsions  and  shrinkings 
incident  to  disgusting  offices  unknown  even  to 
chambermaids  and  stable  boys. 

"  But  as  Doctor  Holmes  well  said,  there 
are  more  attractive  and  instructive  matters  to 
engage  our  most  grateful  interest  in  the  oc 
casion  to  which  he  gave  such  a  grand  inter- 


280  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

pretation.  The  century  of  medical  history  which 
he  sketched  with  such  a  na'fve  and  vigorous 
narrative  has  its  most  suggestive  incidents 
lettered  on  the  walls  on  the  main  stairway  of 
the  imposing  ediftce  just  opened  for  use. 
Little  Holden  Hall  in  Cambridge ;  the  obscure 
structure  on  Mason  street ;  the  melancholy 
building  on  Grove  street,  with  its  tragic  history, 
in  which  the  donor  of  its  site  was  turned  to 
a  use  by  no  means  serviceable  to  science, 
make  up  the  genealogical,  architectural  ancestry 
of  the  new  hall.  The  development  in  the 
material  fabric  is  no  inadequate  symbol  of  the 
NT**  progress  in  every  quality,  accomplishment  and 
\  attainment  characteristic  of  the  advance  of  the 
^1  \>  profession  in  the  last  hundred  years." 

The  name  of  Doctor  Holmes  will  always  be 
so  intimately  connected  with  the  Harvard 
Medical  School  that  we  give  below  a  brief 
sketch  of  its  past  history. 

In  the  year  1780,  the  Boston  Medical  Society 
voted  "  that  Doctor  John  Warren  be  desired 
to  demonstrate  a  course  of  anatomical  lectures 
the  ensuing  winter."  The  course  of  lectures 
proved  so  popular  that  the  corporation  of  the 
college  asked  Doctor  Warren  to  draw  up  a 


THE  HAEVAED  MEDICAL  SCHOOL.  281 

plan  for  a  Medical  School  in  connection  with 
Harvard  College.  At  the  commencement  of 
the  school,  October  7th,  1783,  there  were  three 
professors :  Doctor  John  Warren,  who  lectured 
on  anatomy  and  surgery ;  Doctor  Aaron  Dex 
ter,  who  took  the  department  of  chemistry  and 
materia  medica ;  and  Doctor  Benjamin  Water- 
house,  instructor  in  the  theory  and  practice 
of  medicine.  During  the  first  year  of  its 
establishment  the  attendance  was  rather  small, 
consisting  of  members  of  the  senior  class  of 
the  college  and  those  students  who  could  pro 
cure  the  consent  of  their  parents.  The  name 
of  the  first  graduate  recorded  was  that  of  John 
Fleet,  in  1788,  and  he  seems  to  have  been 
the  only  graduate  of  that  class. 

In  1806,  Doctor  John  Collins  Warren,  son 
of  Doctor  John  Warren,  was  appointed  assist 
ant  professor  of  anatomy  and  surgery.  He 
proved  a  most  enthusiastic  laborer  in  behalf  of 
the  school  and  to  it  he  gave  his  large  anatom 
ical  collection,  which  was  considered  the  most 
complete  in  the  country.  In  his  will  he  be 
queathed  his  body  to  the  interest  of  science, 
and  provided  that  his  skeleton  be  prepared  .and 
mounted,  to  serve  the  uses  of  the  demonstra- 


282  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

tors  on  anatomy.  It  was  he,  also,  who  took 
the  first  steps  that  led  to  the  establishment  of 
the  Medical  School  in  Boston.  At  49  Marl- 
borough  street,  he  opened  a  room  for  the  demon 
stration  of  practical  anatomy,  and  here  a  course 
of  lectures  was  started  in  the  autumn  of  1810 
by  Doctors  Warren,  Jackson,  and  Waterhouse. 

In  1816,  the  "Massachusetts  Medical  College" 
was  formally  inaugurated  in  a  building  erected 
on  Mason  street  by  a  special  grant  from  the 
Commonwealth.  At  this  time  the  faculty  con 
sisted  of  Doctors  Jackson,  Warren,  Gorham, 
Jacob  Bigelow  and  Walter  Channing. 

In  1821  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital 
on  Allan  street,  was  established ;  the  two  insti 
tutions  have  since  been  intimately  connected  as 
the  resources  afforded  students  by  the  Hospital 
are  here  given  to  members  of  the  Medical  School. 

In  1836,  Doctor  Jackson  resigned  his  posi 
tion,  and  Doctor  John  Ware,  the  assistant 
professor  of  theory  and  practice  was  appointed 
in  the  chair.  Eleven  years  later  Doctor  John 
Collins  Warren  resigned,  having  served  the  in 
terests  of  the  school  for  forty-one  years. 

In     1847,     through    the    liberality    of    Doctor  \ 
George  C.  Shattuck,  Sr.,  a  professorship  of  patho-   I 


THE  HARVARD  MED'ICAL  SCHOOL.  283 

logical  anatomy  was  established,  and  Doctor 
John  Barnard  Swett  Jackson  was  appointed  to 
fill  the  chair.  It  was  during  this  year  that 
Doctor  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  chosen 
Parkman  professor  of  anatomy  and  physiology. 

In  1849  Doctor  Henry  J.  Bigelow  was  ap 
pointed  to  the  chair  of  surgery  left  vacant  by 
the  resignation  of  Doctor  George  Hayward,  and 
in  1854,  Doctor  Walter  Channing  was  succeeded 
by  Doctor  David  Humphreys  Storer.  In  1855 
Doctor  Jacob  Bigelow  resigned,  and  was  suc 
ceeded  by  Doctor  Edward  Hammond  Clarke. 

The  building  on  North  Grove  street,  erected 
by  a  grant  of  the  State  upon  land  donated  by 
Doctor  George  Parkman,  was  first  occupied  by 
the  school  in  1846.  In  this  building,  which 
was  considered  amply  commodious  at  that 
time,  were  stored  the  Warren  Anatomical 
Museum,  the  physiological  library  founded  by 
George  Woodbury  Swett,  the  gifts  to  the 
chemical  department  by  Doctor  John  Bacon, 
and  the  collection  of  microscopes  given  by 
Doctor  Ellis.  Since  then  the  number  of  med 
ical  students  has  constantly  increased  and  the 
accommodations  becoming  inadequate,  steps  were 
taken  for  the  erection  of  the  new  building. 


284  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

TOKENS    OF    ESTEEM. 

SAID  one  of  the  medical  students  in  Doctor 
Holmes'  last   class   at    Harvard : 
"  We  always   welcomed  Professor  Holmes  with 
enthusiastic     cheers     when    he     came    into    the 
class  room,  and  his  lectures   were   so  brimful   of 
witty    anecdotes    that    we    sometimes    forgot    it 
was    a    lesson    in    anatomy    we    had    come    to 

learn.      But   the    instruction  —  deep,    sound   and 
\tj  r 

thorough  —  was  there  all  the  same,  and  we 
never  left  the  room  without  feeling  what  a 
fund  of  knowledge  and  what  a  clear  insight 
upon  difficult  points  in  medical  science  had  been 
imparted  to  us  through  the  sparkling  medium  ! " 
The  position  of  Parkman  Professor  of  Ana 
tomy  in_,Harvard  University,  was  resigned  by 
Doctor  Holmes  in  the  autumn  of  1882,  that  he 
might  give  his  time  more  exclusively  to  literary  pur 
suits.  He  was  immediately  appointed  Professor 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.       '  285 

t 
Emeritus  by   the    college,   and    Doctor    Thomas 

Dwight,  a  teacher  in  the  Medical  School,  suc 
ceeded  him  in  the  active  duties  of  the  chair. 

The  last  lecture  of  Doctor  Holmes  before 
his  students,  was  delivered  in  the  anatomical 
room,  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  November.  As 
he  entered  the  room,  a  storm  of  applause 
greeted  him,  and  then  as  it  died  away,  one 
of  the  students  came  forward  and  presented 
him,  in  behalf  of  -  his  last  class,  with  an  ex 
quisite  "  Loving  Cup."  On  one  side  of  this 
beautiful  souvenir  was  the  happy  quotation 
from  his  own  writings :  "  Love  bless  thee,  joy 
crown  three,  God  speed  thy  career." 

Doctor  Holmes  was  so  deeply  affected  by 
this  delicate  token  of  esteem  that,  afterwards, 
in  acknowledging  the  cup  by  letter,  he  said 
that  the  tribute  was  so  unexpected  it  made 
him  speechless.  He  was  quite  sure,  however, 
that  they  did  not  mistake  aphasia  for  acardia  — 
his  heart  was  in  its  right  place,  though  his 
tongue  forgot  its  office. 

In  the  address  to  his  class,  the  Professor 
gave  an  interesting  review  of  his  thirty-five 
years'  connection  with  the  school.  Then  he 
referred  to  his  early  college  days,  and  to  his 


286  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

studies  in  Paris,  and  added  many  delightful 
reminiscences  of  the  famous  French  savans 
whose  lectures  he  attended  at  that  time.  A 
full  report  of  this  address  may  be  found  in 
the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal,  for 
December  7,  1882. 

This,  one  of  his  most  interesting  essays,  is 
also  reprinted  in  one  of  Doctor  Holmes'  later 
volumes,  entitled  Medical  Essays. 

On  the  evening  of  April  12,  1883,  a  com 
plimentary  dinner  was  given  Doctor  Holmes 
at  Delmonico's,  by  the  medical  profession  of 
New  York  City.  The  reception  opened  at  about 
half-past  six,  and  soon  after  that  hour  Doctor 
Holmes  entered  the  rooms  with  Doctor  Fordyce 
Barker.  The  guests,  numbering  some  two  hun 
dred  and  twenty-five  in  all,  were  seated  at  six 
tables,  the  table  of  honor  occupying  the  upper 
end  of  the  room,  and  decorated  with  banks  of 
choice  flowers. 

The  menus  were  cleverly  arranged  in  the 
form  of  small  books  bound  in  various-colored 
plush.  A  dainty  design  in  gilt,  representing 
a  scalpel  and  pen,  surrounded  by  a  laurel 
wreath,  adorned  the  covers,  and  inside  was  the 

» 

stanza  : 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  287 

A   few '  can  touch  the  magic  string, 

And   noisy  fame  is   proud  to  win   them, 

Alas,  for   those   that  never  sing, 

But   die   with  all  their   music   in   them. 

At  the  top  of  the  leaf  containing  the  bill  of 
fare  were  the  lines : 

You  know  your  own  degree ;  sit  down ;  at  first  and  last 
a  hearty  welcome. 

at   the  end : 

Prithee,  no  more ;  thou  dost  talk  nothing  to  me. 

A  few  minutes  before  the  coffee  was  brought 
in,  each  guest  received  what  purported  to  be  a 
telegram  from  Boston,  dated  April  I,  1883. 
The  message  read  as  follows : 

The   dinner  bell,   the  dinner   bell 

Is   ringing  loud   and   clear, 

Through  hill  and   plain,    through  street  and  lane 
It  echoes  far  and  near. 

I   hear  the   voice  I  I   go,  I  go  I 

Prepare   your  meat   and   wine; 
They   little   heed   their  future     need 
Who  pay  not   when    they  dine. 

—a  w.  H, 
The  back   of  the  despatch  was  decorated  with 


288  OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 

two  pictures ;  one  showing  Doctor  Fordyce 
Barker  ringing  a  dinner  bell  and  brandishing  a 
knife  and  fork,  the  other  Doctor  Holmes 
hurrying  to  answer  the  bell,  with  a  pile  of 
books  under  one  arm  and  a  bundle  of  bones 
under  the  other. 

Among  the  guests  present  were  George  Wil 
liam  Curtis,  Hon.  William  M.  Evarts,  Bishop 
Clark,  Whitelaw  Reid,  Doctors  Post,  Emmett, 
Sayre,  Billing,  Vanderpoel  Metcalfe,  Detmoold 
Draper,  Doremus,  Hammond,  St.  J.  Roosa, 
Flint,  Dana,  Peabody,  Ranney,  Jacobi,  Austin, 
and  many  others. 

The   first  toast  was   as  follows  : 

The   hour's  now   come ; 
The  very  minute  bids  thee  ope   thine  ear 
Obey,  and  be   attentive. 

—  The    Tempest 

After  a  few  brief  words  of  introduction,  Doc 
tor  Barker  called  upon  Doctor  A.  H.  Smith 
to  complete  the  greeting,  which  he  did  in  the 
following  happy  lines : 

You've  heard  of  the   deacon's  one   hoss  shay 
Which,   finished   in    Boston   the    self -same  day 
That   the  City    of   Lisbon   went   to   pot, 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  289 

Did   a  century's  service,  and  then  was  not. 

But  the   record's   at  fault  which  says  that  it  burst 

Into   simply   a  heap   of  amorphous  dust, 

For   after   the   wreck   of   that   wonderful  tub 

Out   of   the   ruins  they  saved   a  hub; 

And  the  hub   has  since   stood  for   Boston  town, 

Hub  of  the  universe,   note   that   down. 

But  an   orderly   hub   as   all   will  own, 

Must   have  something  central   to  turn  upon, 

And,   rubber-cushioned,   and   true  and  bright 

We  have  the  axle  here  to-night. 

Thrice   welcome   then  to  our  festal   board 

The   doctor-poet,   so   doubly  stored 

With  science  as  well   as  with  native  wit, 

Poeta  nascitur,    you   know,   non  Jit, 

Skilled  to  dissect  with  knife  or  pen 

His  subjects  dead   or  living  men  ; 

With  thought  sublime  on  every  page 

To   swell   the  veins   with   virtuous  rage, 

Or  with  a  syringe   to   inject  them 

With  sublimate   to   disinfect  them  ; 

To  show  with   demonstrator's   art 

The   complex  chambers   of  the   heart, 

Or   armed  with  a   diviner   skill 

To   make   it  pulsate   at   his  will ; 

With  generous   verse   to   celebrate 

The   loaves  and  fishes  of  some  giver; 

And  then   proceed   to   demonstrate 

The   lobes   and  fissures  of  the   liver; 

To  soothe  the   pulses  of    the   brain 

With  poetry's   enchanting  strain, 

Or  to  describe  to  class  uproarious 


290  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

Pes  hippocampi  accessorious  ; 
To  nerve   with  fervor   of  appeal 
The  sluggish  muscles   into   steel, 
Or,   pulling  their   attachments,   show 
Whence   they  arise   and   where   they  go; 
To   fire  the  eye   by  wit  consummate, 
Or  draw  the   aqueous  humor   from  it; 
In  times  of  peril  give  the  tone 
To   public  feeling,   called  backbone, 
Or   to   discuss   that   question  solemn, 
The   muscles   of  the  spinal  column. 
And  now   I   close   my   artless   ditty 
As  per  agreement  with   committee, 
And   making   place  for   those  more   able 
I  leave  the  subject  on  the  table. 

The  toast  "  Our  Guest,"  was  prefaced  by 
the  following  quotation  from  Emerson ; 

"  One  would  say  here  is  a  man  with  such 
an  abundance  of  thought !  He  is  never  dull, 
never  insincere,  and  has  the  genius  to  make 
the  reader  care  for  all  that  he  cares  for." 

As  Doctor  Holmes  rose,  the  room  fairly 
shook  with  applause.  Without  any  prefatory 
remarks,  he  then  read  the  following  poem  : 

Have   I  deserved  your  kindness  ?     Nay,   my  friends ; 
While   the  fair   banquet   its    illusion   lends, 
Let  me  believe  it,   though   the   blood  may  rush 
And  to  my  cheek  recall  the  maiden   blush 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  291 

That   o'er  it   flamed  with  momentary  blaze 

When   first   I   heard  the   honeyed  words   of  praise; 

Let   me   believe    it   while   the   roses   wear 

Their   bloom   unwithering   in   the   heated   air; 

Too  soon,   too  soon   their  glowing  leaves   must  fall, 

The   laughing  echoes   leave   the  silent   hall, 

Joy  drop  his   garland,   turn   his  empty   cup, 

And  weary  labor   take   his   burden   up, — 

How  weigh  that  burden   they   can  tell   alone 

Whose   dial   marks   no   moment   as  their  own. 

Am   I  your   creditor  ?    Too   well   I   know 
How  Friendship  pays   the  debt  it   does   not   owe, 
Shapes   a  poor   semblance  fondly   to   its   mind, 
Adds   all   the   virtues  that   it  fails  to   find, 
Adorns   with  graces   to   its   heart's   content, 
Borrows  from  love  what  nature   never  lent, 
Till  what  with   halo,   jewels,  gilding,   paint, 
The   veriest   sinner  deems   himself  a  saint. 
Thus  while  you  pay  these   honors   as   my  due, 
I   owe   my  value's  larger   part   to   you ; 
And  in  the   tribute  of  the   hour  I   see 
Not  what   I  am,   but  what   I   ought   to   be. 

Friends  of  the  Muse,   to  you   of  right  belong 
The  first  staid  footsteps   of  my  square-toed   song ; 
Full   well   I  know   the   strong  heroic  line 

Has  lost   its  fashion   since   I   made   it  mine ; 

i 

But  there   are   tricks  old  singers  will  not   learn, 
And  this  grave   measure  still   must  serve  my  turn, 
So   the   old   bird   resumes   the   self-same  note 
His  first  young  summer  wakened   in   his   throat; 


292  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

The   self-same  tune   the   old   canary   sings, 

And  all   unchanged  the   bobolink's   carol    rings ; 

When   the   tired  songsters  of  the   day   are  still, 

The   thrush   repeats   his  long-remembered   trill; 

Age  alters   not   the   crow's   persistent   caw, 

The  Yankee's  "  Haow,"   the  stammering  Briton's  "  Haw ;" 

And  so   the   hand   that   takes  the  lyre  for   you 

Plays   the   old   tune   on   strings   that   once   were   new, 

Nor   let   the   rhymester   of   the   hour   deride 

The   straight-backed  measure  with  its   stately  stride ; 

It  gave   the   mighty  voice   of  Dryden   scope; 

It  sheathed   the   steel-bright  epigrams   of  Pope ; 

In   Goldsmith's   verse    it  learned   a   sweeter   strain, 

Byron  and   Campbell  wore  its   clanking  chain ; 

I   smile  to   listen  while   the   critic's   scorn 

Flouts  the   proud   purple  kings   have  nobly   worn ; 

Bid  each  new   rhymer   try   his  dainty  skill 

And  mould  his  frozen   phrases  as  he  will ; 

We   thank   the   artist   for   his   neat   device  — 

The  shape  is   pleasing   though   the   stuff  is  ice. 


Fashions  will   change  —  the  new   costume  allures  — 
Unfading  still  the  better   type   endures  ; 
While   the   slashed   doublet  of   the   cavalier 
Gave  the   old   knight   the   pomp   of   chanticleer, 
Our  last-hatched   dandy  with   his   glass   and  stick 
Recalls   the   semblance  of  a   new-born   chick 
(  To   match  the  model  he   is   aiming   at 
He   ought  to   wear  an  eggshell   for   a   hat  ), 
Which   of  these   objects  would  a  painter  choose, 
And  which  Velasquez   or  Vandyke   refuse  ? 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  293 

When  your  kind  summons   reached   my   calm   retreat, 

Who   are   the   friends,    I   questioned,  I  shall   meet  ? 

Some   in  young  manhood,   shivering   with   desire 

To   feel   the   genial  warmth  of    Fortune'-s   fire  — 

Each   with    his   bellows    ready    in   his    hand 

To   puff   the    flame   just    waiting    to   be   fanned ; 

Some   heads   half-silvered,    some   with   snow-white   hair ; 

A   crown   ungarnished   glistening   here   and  there, 

The   mimic   moonlight   gleaming    on   the   scalps 

As  evening's   empress   lights    the   shining   Alps. 

But  count  the  crowds   that   throng  your   festal   scenes  — 

How  few  that  knew   the   century   in   its   teens ! 

Save   for  the   lingering   handful   fate   befriends, 
Life's   busy   day   the    Sabbath   decade   ends; 
When   that   is   over,   how   with   what   remains 
Of  Nature's  outfit  —  muscle,   nerve    and  brains? 

Were   this  a   pulpit,    I  should   doubtless   preach ; 
Were   this   a   platform,  I  should  gravely  teach; 
But   to   no   solemn   duties   I   pretend 
In  my  vocation  at  the   table's   end, 
So  as   my  answer   let   me   tell   instead 
What  Landlord  Porter  —  rest   his   soul  —  once   said. 
A  feast   it  was   that   none   might   scorn   to   share; 
Cambridge   and   Concord  demigods  were   there  — 
And   who   were   they  ?      You   know   as   well   as   I 
The   stars  long   glittering    in  our  Eastern   sky  — 
The   names   that  blazon   our  provincial   scroll 
Ring   round  the   world   with    Britain's   drumbeat   roll  I 

Good  was   the   dinner,   better  was   the    talk ; 

Some   whispered,  devious  was   the   homeward   walk  ; 


294  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

The  story  came   from   some  reporting   spy  — 
They  lie,  those  fellows  —  Oh,   how   they   do  lie ! 
Not   ours   those  foot  tracks    in   the  new  fallen  snow  — 
Poets   and   sages  never  zigzagged  so  1 

Now   Landlord   Porter,   grave,  concise,   severe, 

Master,   nay,   monarch,   in   his  proper   sphere, 

Though  to  belles-lettres   he  pretended  not, 

Lived   close   to  Harvard,   so   knew   what  was  what; 

And   having   bards,   philosophers  and  such 

To  eat   his   dinner,   put  the   finest  touch 

His  art   could  teach,   those  learned  mouths   to   fill 

With   the  best   proofs  of  gustatory  skill ; 

And   finding  wisdom  plenty   at  his   board, 

Wit,   science,   learning,  all   his  guests   had  stored, 

By  way   of  contrast,   ventured   to   produce, 

To  please  their  palates,   an  inviting  goose. 

Better  it   were  the  company   should    starve 

Than   hands   unskilled   that  goose   attempt  to   carve ; 

None  but   the  master   artist  shall  assail 

The   bird  that   turns  the   mightiest  surgeon   pale. 

One   voice   arises  from  the   banquet   hall,  — 
The   landlord  answers   to   the   pleading   call ; 
Of  stature   tall,  sublime  of  port   he   stands, 
His   blade   and    trident  gleaming   in  his   hands ; 
Beneath   his   glance  the    strong-knit    joints  relax 
As   the  weak  knees   before   the  headsman's  axe. 

And   Landlord   Porter  lifts   his   glittering   knife 
As  some  stout   warrior   armed  for   bloody   strife ; 
All   eyes   are  on  him ;    some   in  whispers   ask  — 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  295 

What   man  is   he   who  dares   this   dangerous   task? 
When,  lo  I   the   triumph  of  consummate  art, 
With  scarce   a  touch  the   creature   drops   apart ! 
As   when  the   baby  in  his   nurse's  lap 
Spills    on  the   carpet   a   dissected  map. 

x 

Then   the   calm   sage,   the    monarch  of   the  lyre, 
Critics  and   men   of   science    all   admire, 
And   one   whose   wisdom   I  will   not   impeach, 
Lively,   not   churlish,  somewhat  free    of  speech, 
Speaks  thus :     "  Say,   master,   what   of  worth   is   left 
In   birds   like   this,   of   breast   and   legs   bereft  ? " 

And   Landlord   Porter,   with   uplifted   eyes, 

Smiles  on  the  simple   querist,    and   replies  — 

"  When  from   a  goose   you've  taken   legs   and  breast, 

Wipe   lips,  thank   God,   and  leave  the   poor   the   rest ! " 

Kind  friends,   sweet  friends,  I   hold   it  hardly  fair 

With  that   same   bird   your  minstrel   to  compare, 

Yet  in  a  certain   likeness  we   agree  — 

No  wrong  to   him,  and   no   offence   to   me ; 

I  take  him   for   the   moral   he   has   lent, 

My   partner  —  to   a  limited   extent. 

When  the   stern   landlord,   whom   we   all    obey, 
Has  carved  from  life   its   seventh   great  slice    away, 
Is   the   poor  fragment   left   in  blank   collapse 
A   pauper   remnant    of   unvalued    scraps  ? 
I   care   not  much    what    Solomon   has   said, 
Before  his   time    to   nobler   pleasures   dead; 
Poor  man !    he    needed    half  a   hundred   lives 
With  such   a   babbling  wilderness   of   wives' 


296  OLIVER  WENDELL  IIOLMES. 

But   is   there  nothing   that  may  well   employ 
Life's  winter   months  —  no   sunny   hour   of   joy? 
While  o'er  the   fields  the   howling  tempests  rage, 
The   prisoned   linnet   warbles   in   his    cage ; 
When   chill    November   through  the  forest  blows, 
The   greenhouse   shelters   the   untroubled   rose, 
Round   the   high   trellis   creeping   tendrils  twine, 
And  the  ripe  clusters   fill  with  blameless   wine, 
We  make   the   vine  forget   the   winter's   cold, 
But   how   shall  age   forget  it's   growing   old  ? 

Though   doing   right   is   better   than   deceit, 

Time   is  a  trickster  it   is  fair   to   cheat; 

The   honest  watches  ticking  in  your  fobs 

Tell  every  minute  how   the   rascal   robs. 

To   clip   his  forelock   and   his  scythe  to   hide, 

To  lay   his   hour-glass   gently   on    its  side, 

To  slip   the   cards   he  marked   upon   the   shelf, 

And  deal  him   others   you  have    marked   yourself, 

If  not   a   virtue,    cannot   be   a  sin, 

For   the   old   rogue  is   sure   at  last   to   win. 

What  does   he   leave   when    life  is   well-nigh  spent 
To   lap   its   evening   in  a   calm    content  ? 
Art,  Letters,   Science,  these  at   least   befriend 
Our  day's   brief  remnant   to   its   peaceful   end  — 
Peaceful   for  him   who    shows   the  setting  sun 
v  A   record  worthy   of  his   Lord's  "  well  done  ! " 

When  he,   the   Master   whom    I   will   not   name, 
Known   to   our    calling,   not    unknown  to   fame, 
At   life's   extremest    verge   half-conscious  lay, 
Helpless    and   sightless,   dying   day   by   day, 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  297 

His  brain,  so  long  with  varied   wisdom   fraught, 

Filled   with   the   broken   enginery   of   thought, 

A   flitting   vision   often   would   illume 

His   darkened   world   and   cheer   its   deepening  gloom, — 

A   sunbeam   struggling   through   the   long   eclipse, — 

And  smiles   of   pleasure   play   around   his    lips. 

He   loved   the   Art   that   shapes   the   dome   and   spire ; 

The  Roman's  page,  the   ring  of   Byron's  lyre, 

And  oft,  when   fitful   memory  would    return 

To   find   some   fragment   in   her   broken  urn, 

Would   wake   to   life   some  long-forgotten   hour, 

And  lead   his   thought  to    Pisa's  terraced  tower, 

Or  trace   in   light   before   his   rayless   eye 

The   dome-crowned   Pantheon   printed   on   the   sky; 

Then   while   the  view  his   ravished   soul   absorbs 

And   lends   a   glitter  to   the    sightless   orbs, 

The   patient   watcher   feels   the   stillness   stirred 

By   the  faint   murmur   of  some   classic  word, 

Or  the   long   roll   of   Harold's   lofty  rhyme, 

"  Simple,   erect,   severe,   austere,   sublime,"  — 

Such   were   the   dreams   that   soothed   his   couch  of  pain, 

The   sweet  nepenthe   of  the   worn-out  brain. 

Brothers   in   art,  who   live   for  others'  needs 
In   duty's  bondage,  mercy's  gracious  deeds, 
Of   all    who   toil   beneath   the   circling   sun 
Whose   evening   rest   than   yours   more  fairly   won  ? 
Though   many  a  cloud  your  struggling   morn    obscures, 
What   sunset   brings   a  brighter  sky  than    yours  ? 

I,  who   your  labors  for  a  while   have   shared, 

New  tasks    have   sought,  with   new  companions   fared, 

For   Nature's   servant   far   too  often   seen 


298  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

A   loiterer  by  the  waves   of   Hippocrene; 

Yet  round  the   earlier  friendship   twines   the   new ; 

My  footsteps   wander,  but  my   heart   is   true, 

Nor  e'er  forgets   the   living   <Jr   the   dead 

Who   trod   with   me   the   paths   where   science   led. 

How   can    I   tell   you,  O   my   loving   friends, 

What   light,  what   warmth,  your  joyous   welcome  lends 

To   life's  late   hour?    Alas!  my   song   is  sung, 

Its   fading   accents   falter  on   my  tongue. 

Sweet  friends,  if  shrinking   in   the   banquet's   blaze, 

Your   blushing  guest  must  face   the   breath   of    praise, 

Speak  not  too  well   of  one   who   scarce  will  know 

Himself  transfigured   in   its   roseate   glow; 

Say   kindly   of  him   what   is  —  chiefly  —  true, 

Remembering   always  he   belongs   to   you ; 

Deal   with  him   as   a  truant,   if  you   will, 

But   claim  him,  keep   him,   call   him   brother  still ! 

The  next  toast  was  to  "The  Clergy." 

He    was  a  scholar,    and    a    ripe    and   good    one,  exceeding 

wise,  fair-spoken   and  persuading. 

—  King  Henry    VIII. 

Bishop  Clark  of  Rhode  Island  responded. 
"  We  honor,"  he  said,  "  the  high  priesthood  of 
science  and  art.  We  honor  the  man  who  has 
brought  life  and  joy  to  many  weary  dwellings, 
and  therefore  we  extend  the  right  hand  of  fellow 
ship  to  him."  When  after  tracing  the  lineage  of 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  299 

the  guest,  he  reviewed  his   life,  quoted   from   his 
writings,   and    said    in    conclusion,  that    he    stood 
side   by  side   with    Oliver  Goldsmith. 
The   toast   to   "The   Bar"  — 

Why   might   that   not   be   the   skull 

Of  a  lawyer  ?     Where   be    his   quidet's   now  ? 

—  Hamlet. 

was   answered   by    Hon.    Wm.    M.    Evarts,    in    a 
witty   and    characteristic  address. 

Doctor  T.  Gaillard  Thomas  responded  to  the 
toast,  "  The  Medical  Profession  "  — 

She   honors   herself   in   honoring  a  favorite   son,  — 

and     George     William     Curtis     followed     in     an 
address,  answering  to   the    toast    "  Literature  "  — 

A   kind  of  medicine   in  itself. 

—  Measure  for  Measure. 

All  factions,  he  declared,  claimed  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  and  all  peoples  spoke  of 
him  in  praise.  He  then  mentioned  many  of 
the  poet's  songs,  reciting  a  stanza  occasionally 
and  commenting  on  them  in  a  touching  man 
ner.  The  next  toast  was  "The  Press"  — 


300  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

But  words  are  things,  and  a  small   drop  of  ink 

Falling   like   dew  upon   a  thought,   produces 

That   which   makes   thousands,   perhaps   millions,   think. 

—  Byron. 

This  was  responded  to  by  Whitelaw  Reid  in 
a  humorous  address  in  which  he  closely  con 
nected  Doctor  Holmes  with  the  profession  of 
journalism.  It  was  a  late  hour  when  the  com 
pany  separated,  and  the  last  toast  given,  found 
a  hearty,  though  silent  response  from  all  pres 
ent — 

Good-night,   good-night  !     Parting   is   such   sweet   sorrow, 
That   I   shall   say  good-night   till   it   be   to-morrow. 

—  Romeo  and  Juliet. 


Before  closing  this  long  chapter  of  "honors 
to  Doctor  Holmes,"  we  cannot  refrain  from  giv 
ing  the  following  cordial  tribute  from  John 
Boyle  O'Reilly: 

"Oliver  Wendell  Holmes:  —  the  wise,  the 
witty,  the  many  idead,  philosopher,  poet,  physi 
cian,  novelist,  essayist,  professor,  but,  best  of  all, 
the  kind,  the  warm  heart.  A  man  of  unex 
pected  tastes,  ranging  in  all  directions  from 
song  to  science,  and  from  theology  to  boat- 


TOKENS  OF  ESTEEM.  301 

racing.  He  met  one  day  on  Tremont  street 
an  acquaintance  fond  of  athletic  exercise,  and 
he  stopped  himself  with  a  pathetic  little  sigh. 

"  '  Ah,  you  send  me  back  fifty  years,'  he  said. 
'As  you  walked  then  with  a  swing,  you  reminded 
me  of  an  old  friend  who  was  dead  before  you 
were  born ;  and  he  was  a  good  man  with 
his  hands,  too.' 

"  Never  was  a  more  healthy,  natural,  lovable 
man  than  Doctor  Holmes." 

With  Whittier  we  repeat,  "Long  may  hejlive, 
dear  Doctor  Holmes,  to  make  broader  the  race 
of  our  care-ridden  generation,  and  to  realize  for 
himself  the  truth  of  the  wise  man's  declara 
tion,  that  a  merry  heart  is  a  continual  feast." 

When  violets  fade  the  roses  blow; 

When  laughter  dies  the  passions  wake ; 
His  royal  song,  that  slept  below, 

Like  Arthur's  sword  beneath  the  lake, 
Long  since  has  flashed  its  fiery  glow 
O'er  all  we  know. 

The  silken  tress,  the  mantling  wine, 

Red  roses,  summer's  whispering  leaves, 

Th.   lips  that  kiss,  the  hands  that  twine, 
The  heart  that  loves,  the  heart  that  grieves, 

They  all  have  found  a  deathless  shrine 
In  his  rich  line  ! 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


POETICAL  ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  TH  ATHENAEUM  GALLERY  OP 
PAINTINGS.  Boston :  True  &  Osgood.  1827. 

This  book  contains  short  poems  by  John  Osborne  Sargent  and  Park  Benjamin, 
besides  those  attributed  to  Doctor  Holmes. 

THE  HARBINGER.     A  May  Gift,  dedicated  to  the  ladies  who  have 

so   kindly  aided  the  New  England   Institution  for  the  Blind. 

Boston  :    Carter,  Hendee  &  Co      1833. 

John  Osborne  Sargent  was  also  a  contributor  to  this  book. 
POEMS.     Boston  :    Otis,  Broaders  &  Co.     1836. 
BOYLSTON  PRIZE  DISSERTATIONS,  for  the  years  1836  and  1837. 

Boston  :    Charles  C.  Little  and  James  Brown      1838. 

The  subjects  of  these  dissertations  are  as  follows  :  The  first  is  on  "  Indigenous 
Intermittent  Fever  in  New  England;"  the  second  on  "  Neuralgia ;"  and  the 
third  on  "  Direct  Exploration."  They  are  all  dedicated  to  Pierre  Chas. 
Alex.  Louis,  Doctor  of  Medicine  of  the  faculties  of  Paris  and  St.  Petersburg. 

MARSHALL  HALLOS  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  THEORY  AND  PRACTICE 
OF  MEDICINE.  First  American  edition,  revised  anc  enlarged  by 
Jacob  Bigelow  and  O.  W.  Holmes.  Boston  :  1839. 

HOMOEOPATHY  AND  ITS  KINDRED  DELUSIONS.  Two  lectures 
delivered  before  the  Boston  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful 
Knowledge.  Boston:  William  D.  Ticknor.  1842. 

THE  POSITION  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  MEDICAL  STUDENT  An 
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Printer.  1844. 

URANIA:  A  RHYMED  LESSON.  Delivered  before  the  Mercantile 
Library  Association.  Boston  :  1846. 

REPORT  OF  THE  COMMITTEE  ON  MEDICAL  LITERATURE.  Pub 
lished  in  transactions  of  the  American  Medical  Association, 
Vol.  I.  1847. 

INTRODUCTORY  LECTURE.  Delivered  at  the  Massachusetts  Medi 
cal  College,  November  3,  1847.  Boston:  William  D.  Ticknor 
&  Co.  1847. 

ASTR^A  :     THT    BALANCE  OF    ILLUSIONS.     Boston :    Ticknor, 
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